What I am finding interesting here is that so many people today imagine the kind of "physicians" in the 1st century CE are like medical doctors today (I'll include Osteopaths under the term "medical doctor").
Modern medical doctors go through four years of undergraduate college, four years of graduate level medical school, and four years or so of residency, and the primary aim is, besides to heal, set themselves up financially. They are thoroughly trained professionals. One does not see too many poor doctors, at last in "first world" western nations. That is why many physicians who receive their medical training in India or Asia, where it is significantly less expensive (although offering very little financial rewards in these regions), move west. More power to them, I say!
Yet in the 1st century, a "physician" was little more than a practical nurse and homeopath. Very few of them received any formal training in medicine, unless they studied at a temple to Asclepius or followed in the train of an established itinerant physician. Some went on to fame as skilled, Like Galen, but in general "medicine" in those days has a very BAD reputation. Many doctors were considered inept or just hucksters out to bilk sick folks out of their money. The advice given THEN was sometimes about as bad as modern gym teachers refusing to let overheated students drink cold water from a fountain, or the Amish treating all ailments with pine tar.
See HEILBRUNN TIMELINE OF ART HISTORY ESSAYS "Medicine in Classical Antiquity"
https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/medi/hd_medi.htm
From the earliest times, treatments involved incantations, invoking the gods, and the use of magical herbs, amulets, and charms. Drug sellers, root cutters, midwives, gymnastic trainers, and surgeons all offered medical treatment and advice. In the absence of formal qualifications, any individual could offer medical services, and literary evidence for early medical practice shows doctors working hard to distinguish their own ideas and treatments from those of their competitors.[bolding is mine]
Or this source: "Medical practice in Graeco-Roman antiquity" June 2006 Curationis 29(2):34-40
Authors: Louise Cilliers (University of the Free State) and Francois Pieter Retief
https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... _antiquity
Medical training was by way of apprenticeship with recognized doctors, but no qualifying examinations existed and the standard of practice thus varied enormously. Even in the Roman era the vast majority of medical doctors were Greek and in private practice as itinerant physicians.[again, bolding is mine]
We also have modern misconceptions about ancient life, as if there was a relatively large "middle class." In fact, all "middle class" folks in those days were retainers for wealthy patrons, including slaves in positions of responsibility, and the proportion of the population who these two classes represented, was between 5-10% of the entire population.
DCH
