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52 FIRST PERIOD—ANTIQUITY

tion, notwithstandino- that the instruments then in use cannot have been
other than very imperfect; and this is clearly to be seen from a passage
in the book entitled De uiechco, w^here, after having spoken of the articles
and instruments that ought to be kept in a doctor's office {ojficina rnedtci),
he adds:
"These are the instruments necessary to the doctor's operating room
and in the handling of which the disciple should be exercised; as to the
V- pincers for pulling out teeth, anyone can handle them, because evidently
the manner in which they are to be used is simple."^
Having made mention of the officma medici, we think it opportune
to explain here with some precision what is to be understood by this term."
Medicine and surgery were practised in ancient times in open shops;
this was so in Greece, and later also in Rome. When the practice of

Fig. 8

Very ancient dental forceps and two other dental T) instruments existing in the
(
Archaeological Museum of Athens.

medicine became secularized through its abandoning the y^sculapian
temples, doctors' shops began to arise in the most important centres of
population, to which those in need of assistance resorted or were carried.
In time these stations for the practice of medicine, and particularly of
surgery, became more and more numerous.
The Hippocratic collection contains a special treatise (De officina
medici), which speaks of the conditions these places were expected to
fulfil, the articles therein to be contained, the instruments, the general
rules relative to operations, the bandages, etc.
About six hundred years later, Galen wrote three books of commen-
taries on this treatise of Hippocrates. He says, among other things,

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^ See Daremberg, Dictionnaire dcs Antiquitcs (jrccjues et Roniaines, article "Chirurgie."