Medicine in Rome was at once incredibly different and incredibly close to what it is today. Different, of course, because of what 2,000 years of discoveries and research gave us; but similar, because some of our ancestors’ intuitions – which they, to be fair, largely inherited from the Greeks and the Egyptians – are the same upon which modern medicine was founded.
The Romans had doctors and medicines, surgeons, and even family physicians: according to sources, in 229 BC the State had bought an office for a Greek doctor named Archagathus, had and awarded him Roman citizenship immediately so that he could begin practicing straight away. Archagatus didn’t pay any rent on the rooms he practiced in, a clear sign that his work was subsidized by the Roman State: his duty was to provide its citizens with medical care.
