“11. There is no doubt that all these doctors sought fame by means of some innovation, and irresponsibility trafficked with our lives. This accounts for those wretched arguments at the sick-bed when no two doctors give the same opinion for fear that a colleague’s diagnosis might appear to carry more weight. It also accounts for the sad inscription occurring on some monuments which says: ‘A gang of doctors killed me.’ The art of medicine changes daily and is constantly given a new look: we are swept along by the empty words of Greek intellectuals. It is well known that those who are successful speakers have the power of life and death over us, just as if thousands of people do not exist without doctors or medicine. The Romans did so for more than 600 years, although they are not slow to accept advances – and indeed were even avid for medicine until they put it to the test and rejected it!”

(Pliny the Elder in Book XXIX (“Medicine, Doctors and Medical Practice”) of Natural History; p. 263 in John Healy’s Natural History: A Selection.)