Surgery, hospitals, baths, parasites and the realities of frontier health
Roman medicine combined practical experience with ideas inherited particularly from Greek medicine.
Doctors could treat wounds, set bones, perform surgery and prescribe drugs.
The Roman army had a particular reason to develop organised medical care.
Soldiers were expensive to recruit and train.
Keeping them alive mattered.
Military hospitals
Large Roman forts could include purpose-built hospitals known as valetudinaria.
They contained rooms or wards arranged so sick and injured soldiers could be treated away from the barracks.
One of the most important medical sites in Scotland is Cramond.
Cramond produced evidence for a hospital and an important collection of Roman surgical instruments.
Surgery
Roman surgeons possessed specialist equipment.
Instruments could include:
scalpels, probes, forceps, hooks and other tools for treating wounds and carrying out operations.
Roman surgery could be sophisticated, particularly within the military.
But without modern anaesthetics, antibiotics or an understanding of microorganisms, surgery remained painful and dangerous.
Baths and health
Bathhouses were partly social institutions, but cleanliness was also connected with ideas about health.
Most Roman military bathhouses took bathers through a sequence of heated and cold rooms.
Sweat, oil and dirt could be removed before bathing.
Toilets and sanitation
Roman forts could have impressive drainage and communal latrines.
At Bearsden, water from the bathhouse helped flush waste through the latrine.
On the surface this looks remarkably modern.
But archaeology demonstrates the limits of Roman sanitation.
The soldiers had worms
Microscopic examination of sewage at Bearsden identified the eggs of:
whipworm and roundworm.
Both are intestinal parasites transmitted through contaminated material.
A human flea was also found.
So even soldiers living in a fort with baths, drains and a flushing latrine suffered from parasites.
Roman engineering improved daily life.
It did not create a disease-free environment.
Moss instead of a sponge?
Moss fragments found in the Bearsden sewage may have been used for personal cleaning.
If so, this may actually have been safer than repeatedly sharing cleaning implements.
It is another example of archaeology revealing the intimate details of daily life which written history almost never records.
Food as medicine
The distinction between food and medicine was not always clear.
Plants were used both as ingredients and because they were believed to have medicinal properties.
Celery, for example, occurs among the plant remains at Bearsden.
Common mallow may also have been consumed for perceived health benefits.
Roman treatment combined observation, traditional herbal remedies and medical theories that would now be considered incorrect.
Battlefield medicine
The Roman army operating in Scotland faced wounds from:
swords, spears, arrows and accidents.
But military doctors probably spent much more time dealing with ordinary illness, infection, digestive problems and injuries than dramatic battlefield surgery.
Cold, damp conditions and crowded barracks brought their own challenges.
What archaeology can tell us
Medicine leaves less obvious archaeological traces than forts or weapons.
Evidence comes from:
medical instruments, hospital buildings, human remains, parasites, plant remains and sanitation systems.
Together they reveal a military organisation which took healthcare seriously while remaining constrained by ancient understanding of disease.
