An Ounce of Prevention is Worth a Pound of Cure

As a pre-nursing student, I had the opportunity to job shadow a Nurse Practitioner at a family health clinic.  I remember that most of the people who came in to see the doctor were people who had a lot of health problems mostly due to the fact that they hadn’t taken care of their health throughout their lives, and now were in need of a lot of medication and help.  Although not always the case, I believe many health problems could be solved by taking action to prevent, rather than to repair.  

The Romans were great believers in a healthy mind equalling a healthy body.  They spent more time focusing on ways to keep fit, clean, and healthy rather than on doctors.  In the clinic, I observed that most of the patients were part of the lower social class.  In Ancient Rome, the focus was for everyone to have good health- not only the wealthy.  The working people needed good health to work hard, as did the soldiers.  Romans were one of the first groups to introduce a public health program for every social class, not just the wealthy.

As Nate Brown stated, the doctors were not very popular in Rome.  Unlike today, it was actually often a “last resort” type of career- can’t get another job, might as well just .  Many people didn’t trust their techniques or knowledge- and I can understand why because honestly, sometimes I don’t trust the doctors of today, and look how much more educated and experienced they are!  These ancient doctors would often advertise their services on the streets by performing public surgeries… which I’m sure often didn’t work out, explaining why many people didn’t trust them. Maybe people today would focus more on staying healthy if our doctors were as bad as theirs.

Although the Ancient Romans didn’t help us out all that much with doctors, they did make a huge contribution to public health awareness for all social classes, and prevention rather than repair; something we should still be learning from!