The latest in combat medicine, soldier!
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Explanation: Roman military medicine was extremely advanced for its time - in large part because the Roman Legions employed full-time physicians in a variety of specialties (including veterinarians, lmao) in each Legion, meaning there was a large amount of institutional knowledge of effective practice generated, preserved, and passed on. This knowledge could be reasonably expected to be somewhat effective, considering that ineffective practice would be noted by an standing institution, and not just the vague games of telephone that consisted most public medical knowledge before formal medical standards and academia. The famous Graeco-Roman physician Galen, for that matter, served for a time in the Legions before writing his extensive and foundational medical texts that would shape educated Western and Islamic medicine for the next ~1500 years.
Roman military medical specialists ran the gamut from centurion-ranking professional doctors (roughly a modern captain or major), to common soldiers who were exempted from ditch-digging duty in exchange for basic emergency medic duties, including evacuation of the wounded and sometimes field care.
One technique used by Roman military doctors was 'irrigation' of a wound with 'strong wine' and honey. While crude, both of those have mild antiseptic properties. No learning like practice!
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System crossposted this topic to General Medicine
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T #medicine shared this topic
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Forgot the Willow Bark
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Forgot the Willow Bark
There are actually a long list of Roman medicines that are actually effective!
Wormwood for parasites, willow tea for fevers, cannabis and opium for painkilling, aloe vera for skin conditions, colostrum as an antibacterial treatment!
... admittedly, there's an even longer list of Roman medicines that weren't effective beyond placebo, lmao.
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