CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Municipium Aelium Carnuntum,
Capital of Pannonia Superior
April 5th, 167 CE
The evening of the following day Galen washed his hands in the bowl of alcohol-infused water on the table by the door, and stepped aside as he dried them.
“This takes me back to my earliest days as a physician,” he said quietly.
Artorius nodded. He knew that the court doctor had started out treating gladiators in Pergamum, in what was here and now the Greek-speaking half of Asia Minor, west of the Proto-Kurds and Armenians and that odd easternmost clump of Celts known as Galatians.
The junior-officer bedchamber Filipa and the Sarmatian shared was now reorganized as a sickroom; the bed for Sarukê, a cot for the American, and a table for medications and fresh bandages in covered pots. There was a fire burning in the grate, with a clay pot of water bubbling quietly to supply sterile washings, and several lamps gave the little chamber a soft glow, with a faint scent of peaches as well as the sickroom smells.
Filipa was sitting by her partner’s side now, holding her hand; Sarukê was dozing facedown, heavily dosed with a new tincture made of dried opium sap dissolved in alcohol. It was probably fairly close to classic Victorian-era laudanum.
Galen bent his head as he paused before leaving, so that they could speak privately.
“If only I had known then what I do now! The legionary doctor cleaned the Sarmatian woman’s wound thoroughly, and he used the doubled superwine disinfectant liberally on his arrow spoon and the injury itself,” he murmured. “I could not have done much better myself. But though this decreases infections drastically, it is not infallible, as you yourself pointed out to me.”
Artorius nodded. “Especially if foreign matter remains in the wound,” he said.
“Or if the arrow is dipped in dung,” the Greek said, his narrow clever face somber. “Which I am told is often done by the barbarians here. I am sure there is no extensive nerve damage—there is feeling and movement in the arm and finger muscles. Full function may well return, if this infection subsides, but it is worrying.”
He began packing his bag, and his hand lingered over a recent addition to it, besides the brass-and-leather stethoscope; a translation of Gray’s Anatomy, with woodblock illustrations painstakingly copied from the original . . . which had been a paper version of the 2015 edition.
“I was so close to being right about so much!” he said, with soft bitterness, letting the well-thumbed pages fall closed.
“You were right about many things, more so than anyone else of this time,” Artorius said sincerely. “And would have been even more so, if—”
“If the rules of superstitious dolts and cretins . . . and I must admit, my own squeamishness . . . had not kept me from doing human dissections!” he said. “What more might have Herophilus’ students have done in Alexandria, three hundred years ago, if they had been allowed to continue his work! Those laws have crippled medicine ever since.”
“But now you have the results of innumerable dissections,” the American pointed out, nodding toward the thick tome.
“Yes, and your stethoscope, and even more the microscope, revealing a new world to me,” the Greek replied. “I will achieve undying fame . . . mostly by taking the credit for the work of others, in these books of divine insight you brought from your own time.”
“You already had undying fame,” Artorius said, slapping him on the shoulder. “For uncounted generations you were the physician; I studied your life in school, nearly two thousand years from this night!”
That was obviously some consolation. He went on:
“If others saw further, later, they did it standing on your shoulders. Now that fame will be still greater . . . but you still deserve it. And think of the suffering the new books under your name will prevent, the lives saved and prolonged, the illness and crippling injury reduced!”
“Under my name,” the Greek said wryly.
“And given power by your name and reputation. It is your position in the present that makes it likely they will be widely heard and believed. Nobody knows me from a hole in the ground”—there was a brief startled chuckle at the unfamiliar turn of speech—“save as rumors. You are physician to the Imperial family and court.”
The Greek brightened. “Yes . . . yes, it is so, my friend.”
“And think of the Galenus de institutis medicis,” the American said.
That meant Galen Medical Institute; it would be a medical school and hospital outside Rome, and lavishly endowed from the Imperial res privata, with rents assigned to support it. There, dissection of human cadavers would be allowed, to teach surgical skills. In the original history, Galen had lived into his eighties—until 217 CE, in fact. If he equaled that here, he would have a full half century to revolutionize the Roman Empire’s medical practice. With official backing too . . .
“I do, I do! Already I have scores of pages of notes . . . your client Marcus has been invaluable as we worked together to translate the works you brought; if only I can persuade him to be one of the teaching staff! And to run our printing enterprise. From there, knowledge and skill will spread over the whole Empire.”
He used libri terunt for printing; literally, book stamping, which seemed to be the term that would stick. The Emperor had already sent a sample press and men to run it back to Rome, with Greek and Latin type, with Arabic—here and now entitled Pannonian—numerals as well. Josephus had helpfully arranged papermakers too, an enterprise to be run by his young nephew with financial backing from Josephus himself and others of their family.
Marcus Aurelius had been musing about an authoritative compilation of Roman law and the opinions of the iūris consultus, the legal experts who later ages would call jurisconsults. Hundreds or thousands of copies could be distributed, so that every magistracy in the Empire would have the up-to-date references on hand for lawyers and judges to check.
And we can sneak some of our ideas into that, yessiree. Paula already has some ideas about how to do that inconspicuously but with steady long-term effect. Like ending legal guardianship for women at twenty-one or marriage, whichever comes first, the same way Augustus did for women who’d had three children. Interesting that women here don’t need a Victorian-style Married Women’s Property Act, though—Roman law’s already advanced that way. And it pays to know the boss! What the Emperor desires has the force of law, you betcha.
“Mark . . . Marcus . . . has my leave to assist you, once matters are settled here on the Danube,” Artorius said, smiling. “I think he would enjoy seeing Rome.”
When the Greek had left, he pulled up another stool and sat beside Filipa. He touched his fingers to either side of Sarukê’s face below the angle of the jaw.
“Definitely feverish,” he said.
“Hundred and two. And the wound’s draining, and it looks inflamed,” Filipa said.
There was a wondering tenderness as she looked down at the Sarmatian.
“She’s been dreaming . . . calling my name sometimes, and the name of her lover Tirgataô, who was killed when she was captured. Dreaming of both of us, I suppose.”
Artorius reached into the pocket of his tunic and pulled out a cloth; it was wrapped around a square of aluminum-and-plastic foil containing tablets.
“Three a day until the infection’s cleared up and the wound’s healing solidly,” he said. “Shouldn’t take long. The bugs here are defenseless.”
“I hope Jeremey didn’t object that they were irreplaceable, the way he did with Josephus’ kid,” she said.
Artorius smiled and shook his head. “He didn’t object even then, exactly. Just wanted the reasons for the decision made explicit.”
They were all uneasily aware that even the crates full they had wouldn’t last forever, and that they’d all used some of them already, mostly for stomach problems. Not until they were showing symptoms and getting worse, though, which meant their immune systems were getting some education for the new environment.
He went on: “And now both his girlfriends are pregnant, which makes it more . . . immediate for him, too.”
“Has he—”
“Bought and emancipated, so the kids will be full Roman citizens, and he’s going to formally adopt them.”
Which would legitimize them too. They’d be citizens, and affluent ones. Besides the Emperor’s generosity, Jeremey already had a couple of profitable sidelines going, and was drawing up plans for a sugar refinery next year on the estate he’d been granted from the res privata, complete with a rum distillery.
“Children change people. Not to mention that he knows we’ve been dosing the Emperor since not long after he arrived in Vindobona, and he hasn’t said a word about that.”
She looked up, eyes widening in alarm. “Marcus Aurelius is sick?”
“Was sick. From what Galen says about his symptoms, and from what the textbooks say about those, he has ulcers, bad ones—though he’s so damned Stoic about it you’d hardly know. Must have been excruciating. That’s probably what killed him eventually, fifteen years from now; at least that was the academic consensus in the twenty-first and it seems to be right. Mostly ulcers are caused by bacteria, though stress can make it worse.”
“Galen lived into his eighties the first time ’round,” she said.
Artorius nodded. “There’s no reason the Emperor shouldn’t too, and it looks like his insides are clearing up steadily. Augustus made it to his midseventies, and he was sick off and on incessantly and at death’s door three or four times. Forty years of Marcus Aurelius would do the Roman Empire a world of good. And . . . ”
And Commodus might well be out of the way by then, he always burned the candle at both ends, to put it mildly. For that matter, his other son Verus might well live now, he died of an infection after they took a growth out of his ear. We’ll see . . . and if we have to, we’ll see to it.
Filipa nodded and took out the first of the tablets. Artorius helped her hold the other woman, and she gently administered the medicine and a sip of watered wine. Sarukê’s eyes fluttered open, and she smiled and murmured Filipa’s name and something in her own rising-falling language before closing them again.
“Get some sleep yourself,” he said gently.
She nodded absently as he rose and left, closing the door gently behind him.
Julia will be waiting.