Saturnalia(69)

“Will you accompany me?” I asked as I stood.

“Decidedly.” He grinned. We left the island and walked back into the city through the Flumentana Gate. The district was not one of Rome’s better ones, despite the presence of some of Rome’s most ancient and beautiful temples. The dwellers there were involved mainly in the port trade: wharfage, warehousing, barge hauling, and so forth. More foreigners lived there than in any other district within the walls of Rome. Worst of all, the district was directly adjacent to the outlets of Rome’s two largest sewers, including the venerable cloaca maxima. The smell that morning was dreadful, although not as lethal as on a hot summer day.

Ariston’s surgery was located on the upper floor of a two-story building that faced the Forum Boarium. The ground floor was a shop selling imported bronze furniture. The stairway was external, running up the side of the building to an open terrace surrounded on three sides by planter boxes full of ivy and other pleasant greenery. The railing of the stair and the corners of the parapet around the terrace were decorated with sculptured symbols of the medical profession: serpents, the caduceus, and so forth.

We found Narcissus on the terrace, examining a patient in the bright light of morning. He looked up with surprise at out arrival.

“Please, do not let us intrude,” Asklepiodes said.

“Master Asklepiodes!” said Narcissus. “By no means. In fact, if you would do me the courtesy, I would greatly appreciate a consultation.”

“Of a certainty,” Asklepiodes said.

“Good day, Senator … my apologies, but I feel that I should know you.” Narcissus was a handsome, serious-looking young man with dark hair and eyes. Around his brows he wore the narrow hair fillet of his profession, tied at back in an elaborate bow.

“You have treated members of his family,” Asklepiodes said. “This is the senator Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger.”

“Ah! The facial features of the Metelli are indeed distinctive. Welcome, Senator Metellus. Are my services required by your family?”

“I take it then that you’ve assumed the practice of the late Ariston?”

“I have.”

“No, I have some questions about your former patron and mentor. But please attend to your patient first.”

Narcissus turned and clapped his hands. A hungover slave appeared from the penthouse that formed the fourth side of the terrace. “Bring a chair and refreshment for the senator,” the physician ordered.

The man in the examining chair was a stout specimen in his thirties, whose head was a bit malformed on one side. He wore a somewhat sleepy, dazed expression.

“This is Marcus Celsius,” Narcissus said. “He is a regular patient of mine. Last night, during the celebrations, he passed by a tenement where a party was being held on the roof. A tile was dislodged from the parapet and fell four stories, striking him on the head.”

The slave brought me a chair and a cup of warmed wine, and I sat down to watch the proceedings with interest.

“I see,” Asklepiodes said. “Was he carried here or did he walk?”

“He walked and he can speak, although his words grow disjointed after a while.”

“So far, so good then,” Asklepiodes said. He went to the patient and felt the man’s skull with long, sensitive fingers. He probed and poked for a few minutes, during which the patient winced slightly, and only when he touched the minor lacerations of the scalp. Satisfied, Asklepiodes stepped back.

“You are of course familiar with the On Injuries of the Skull of Hippocrates?” Asklepiodes said. He had switched to Greek, a language in which I was tolerably fluent.

“I am, but like my former patron I commonly deal with illnesses rather than injuries.”

“What we have here is a fairly simple depressed skull fracture. The detached cranial fragment moves rather freely and should only need to be lifted back into place and perhaps set with silver wire. I cannot say until I see the fracture exposed, but it may be possible to raise the fragment with a simple probe. Otherwise, it may be done with a screw. My Egyptian slaves are very skilled in both procedures.”

Actually, Asklepiodes did much of his own cutting and stitching, but that was not considered respectable by the medical community, so in public he pretended that his slaves did it all. “The injury is common among the boxers who wear the caestus, so we have a few such cases after almost every set of games that feature athletic contests.

“It is of course impossible to predict these things with certainty,” he went on, “but I see no reason why a complete recovery may not be effected. Have him carried to my surgery at the Statilian ludus and we shall operate this afternoon.”