s, and it
has therefore been inferred that these experiments related to the
investigation of electricity. It is surprising to find in the Twelve
Tables of Numa references to dental operations. In early times, it is
certain that the Romans were more prone to learn the superstitions of
other peoples than to acquire much useful knowledge. They were
cosmopolitan in medical art as in religion. They had acquaintance with
the domestic medicine known to all savages, a little rude surgery, and
prescriptions from the Sibylline books, and had much recourse to magic.
It was to Greece that the Romans first owed their knowledge of healing,
and of art and science generally, but at no time did the Romans equal
the Greeks in mental culture.

Pliny states that "the Roman people for more than six hundred years were
not, indeed, without medicine, but they were without physicians." They
used traditional family recipes, and had numerous gods and goddesses of
disease and healing. Febris was the god of fever, Mephitis the god of
stench; Fessonia aided the weary, and "Sweet Cloacina" presided over the
drains. The plague-stricken appealed to the goddess Angeronia, women to
Fluonia and Uterina. Ossipaga took care of the bones of children, and
Carna was the deity presiding over the abdominal organs.

Temples were erected in Rome in 467 B.C. in honour of Apollo, the
reputed father of AEsculapius, and in 460 B.C. in honour of AEsculapius of
Epidaurus. Ten years later a pestilence raged in the city, and a temple
was built in honour of the Goddess Salus. By order of the Sibylline
books, in 399 B.C., the first _lectisternium_ was held in Rome to combat
a pestilence. This was a festival of Greek origin. It was a time of
prayer and sacrifice; the images of the gods were laid upon a couch, and
a meal was spread on a table before them. These festivals were repeated
as occasion demanded, and the device of driving a nail into the temple
of Jupiter to ward off "the pestilence that walketh in darkness," and
"destruction that wasteth at noonday" was begun 360 B.C. As evidence of
the want of proper surgical knowledge, the fact is recorded by Livy
that after the Battle of Sutrium (309 B.C.) more soldiers died of wounds
than were killed in action. The worship of AEsculapius was begun by the
Romans 291 B.C., and the Egyptian Isis and Serapis were also invoked for
their healing powers.

At the time of the great plague in Rome (291 B.C.), ambassadors were
sent to