Dr's Casebook: Time-travelling along Hadrian's Wall

Dr Keith Souter writes: Yet still, the wall is so impressive and I was soon lost in wonder at the Romans who built it in 122 AD across England’s ever-changing terrain. Along it you encounter ancient forts, milecastles, turrets, Roman baths and a few temples to ancient gods.

The baths were important amenities in the forts and they were often painted with images of Minerva, the goddess of strength or Fortuna, goddess of fate to protect bathers when they were most vulnerable.

The Roman bath was similar to a modern Turkish bath. It had several rooms through which the bather went in turn. First was the frigidarium, which was unheated, where one could take time to play a board game. From there one went to the tepidarium, which was heated by an underground hypocaust. Here oils were rubbed on the skin to start the process of opening the pores. After acclimatising, the bather moved to the caldarium, the hot room, which was really hot and humid by virtue of a steam tank attached to the hypocaust. Here the floor would be too hot to walk on, so one would wear thick wooden sandals. Next would come the laconicum, a super-hot room, where the bather would sit and talk, have the perspiration and oils scraped off with a strigil, before returning to the frigidarium for a cold plunge and cool down.

At Housesteads there are the ruins of a hospital. The Romans termed this a Valetudinarium, from ‘valetudo’ meaning ‘state of health.’ Within it archaeologists identified a room as an operating theatre. Nearby there is a tombstone for a ‘medicus,’ or medical orderly.

The two commonest medical conditions complained of by the Wall soldiers were the common cold and rheumatism. There is evidence that they imported vast amounts of wine mixed with ‘horehound,’ a herb known to be beneficial for coughs

and colds.

The baths were considered indispensable for rheumatic conditions. In addition,

they used urtication, which involved thrashing painful joints and muscles with nettles.

The term comes from ‘Urtica urens,’ the Latin name for nettles, which grow in

abundance by the Wall.