Ancient Rome Medicine

12 Jobs You're Not Gonna Believe Were True

A job can be as hard or easy as you make it to be, depending on how much you enjoy or are passionate about your work. However, it’s pretty hard to imagine how some people working particularly bizarre jobs through out history thought or felt.  Listed below are a couple of odd jobs that caught our eyes ranging from ancient Rome to the Tudor period.

Between the 15th and 16th century, education of the royal youth came as a bit of a predicament for educators. Education has long been enforced through punishment, however the idea of Divine Right of Kings, which stated that kings were appointed by God, and implied that no one but the king was worthy of punishing the king’s son sort of confused tutors.

A solution came up of course, as such whipping boys were appointed – basically another boy studying next to the king’s son would be punished instead of the latter in the eventuality that he would misbehave or simply didn’t do his homework. A whipping boy would be appointed from the nobility, fostered and educated side by side with the king’s son. The implication of this would be that an emotional bond would get built between the two, and as such the royal infant would theoretically then try to behave and study well for the sake of his suffering comrade. In return, it was very common for a whipping boy once an adult to be granted estates or noble titles in return for his services. “No hard feelings, eh?”

No, no, it’s not what you think, far from it, though it does sounds like a really dirty job  – we’ll get to something of the sorts in a tad. I’m ghastly, alright. Going back, urinatore actually means “diver” in Latin, and these were practically the first historically attested military amphibious unit. Having a kettle shaped diving bell filled with air for breathing and weighed down with lead weights, these remarkable Romans would have been able to withstand dives 30 meters deep, and sabotage enemy ships from the beneath.

When war wasn’t around, they would get contracted for deep sea dives, like salvaging or construction work. The salvaging part was particularly enticing for them since in that tumultuous period it was very common for galleons to wreck with treasure. It was not unheard of for some urinatores to become very affluent members of the Roman society.

Another one from England of the 1600s.  It was pretty common for people to have their dogs following them to processions at church, and you simply can’t have dogs running around though church or make a racket during a ceremony – this is where the dog whipper would come in. Yeah, his only job was to chase dogs around and make sure no canine was in the vicinity of a church.

Apitherapy News: Beeswax Used in Ancient Roman Medicine

Residues from medicine containers in the collections of the British Museum have been investigated as part of a wider programme of scientific work on Roman surgical instruments. The cylindrical bronze containers are often described as instrument cases, but some contain materia medica, ranging from extensive extant remains of ancient preparations to possible minor deposits on the interior surfaces of the containers.

Ancient Roman Medicine, Natural History, Febris, Marcellus Empiricus, Medical Community of Ancient Rome, Ancient Greek Medicine

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