Medical issues

The work in the port was physically demanding and it comes as no surpise that the physician Galenus, court physician of Marcus Aurelius, mentions Ostia and Portus when he discusses an abnormal form of dislocated shoulders. However, it is reported ...

	... not in the harbour and in the nearby city which they call Ostia; all the doctors in those places are my friends, and both are populous centres.
Galenus, De humero iis modis prolapso quos Hippocrates non vidit, edition G. Kühn, Vol. XVIII, pp. 347-348.

In the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is a sarcophagus of a physician with a Greek inscription. The provenance is unknown, but the inscription leaves no doubt that it comes from Portus.

	If anyone shall dare to bury another person along with this one, he shall pay to the fiscus three times two thousand. This is what he shall pay to Portus, but he himself will endure the eternal punishment of the violator of graves.
McCann 1978, 138-140. IG XIV, 943. Translation Glanville Downey.

Anna McCann describes the relief as follows: "The figurative design is restricted to a small central panel in which a physician is seated holding a scroll. His surgical instruments, identifying the profession of the deceased, stand in his open instrument case upon a cabinet at the right. While crudely carved, some of the instruments may be identified. On the left side various probes (specilla) are seen, which were used both as sounds in wounds and for applying ointments. On the right side a scalpel with a curved blade is clearly indicated as well as a narrower instrument, probably also a probe. The curved end is similar to the ligula [shoehorn] type of specillum. His bleeding basin and scrolls are seen within the cabinet".

Detail of the sarcophagus in New York.
Photo: Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Two terracotta reliefs with a medical subject were found in the facade of tomb 100 of the Isola Sacra necropolis - this time within a frame. The tomb was built by Scribonia Attice for herself, her husband Marcus Ulpius Amerimnus, her mother Scribonia Callityche, Diocles (presumably a slave), and her freedmen and freedwomen. There had been some serious arguments in the familia, because two freed slaves, Panaratus and Prosdocia, were denied the use of the tomb.

Tomb 100 of the Isola Sacra necropolis. The reliefs have been replaced by casts.
Photo: visitfiumicino.com.

Amerimnus must have been a physician. We can seen him at work on the relief to the left of the inscription above the entrance. He is the bearded person sitting on the left, opposite a patient. He holds an object against the patient's right leg, which rests in a bowl. This might be a bloodletting. On the right are four surgical instruments in an open bag.

Detail of the relief of the surgical operation. Width 0.58, height 0.255. Many remains of red paint.
Photo: American Academy Rome.

Attice was a midwife. On the other relief we see her at work. She is sitting on a stool in front of a naked woman in labor. The woman giving birth is sitting on a birthing chair and is held by a woman behind the chair.

Detail of the relief of the midwife. Width 0.42, height 0.29. Many remains of red paint.
Photo: Parco Archeologico di Ostia Antica.

Another parturition scene is depicted on a marble relief, said to be from Ostia, in the Science Museum in London. A woman lying on a bed is giving birth to two or perhaps three children. She is assisted by three women. It is noteworthy that the woman giving birth is lying down. It has been said that in antiquity women gave birth only in a seated position. However, in the early second century AD Soranus of Ephesus mentions the "general rule that extraction of the fetus in difficult labor must take place with the woman lying down" (Gynecology book II, translation Owsei Temkin, p. 72).

The marble relief in the Science Museum in London. Width 0.34, height 0.25.
Photo: Wellcome Collection.