Level 3 - Life in Roman Sussex - Personal Life-style

Personal Life-style

Health & Healing

Bronze figurine of Aesculapius Copyright: Britsh Museum

Like most aspects of Roman life, health and healing were closely associated with the divine realm. A statuette of the classical healing god Aesculipius was found near Chichester, and the shrine at Muntham Court seems to have been dedicated to a healing divinity.

Doctors did exist in Britain, but it is likely that they were only regularly used by the military and members of the elite classes. Instruments such as the ligula from Highdown bathhouse may have acted as medical probes, while the glass bottle, or unguentaria, shown here from

West Sussex could have contained salves and ointments. The majority of the population probably continued to use a combination of divine faith and natural herbal remedies, much the same as in the Iron Age before and in most periods since, until recent times.

The study of skeletons from cemeteries may tell us something of the health and life-expectancy of individuals in Roman Sussex, although the relatively few excavated inhumations makes it impossible to make any conclusions. Examinations of a group of 14 skeletons from the Needlemakers cemetery at Chichester showed that most died in their early thirties, and many suffered from osteo-arthritis, presumably as a result of a hard physical life. The workers of the Wealden iron industry, many of whom would have been slaves, are likely to have had a much shorter life expectancy.