14. As a young student, Commodus wanted to be a surgeon and he was said to have practiced his scalpel skills on healthy slaves
According to some of his biographers, his twin brother’s early death after a surgical operation in the year 165 was what sparked in Commodus a fascination with medicine. Additionally, another younger brother died soon after going under the surgeon’s knife. His father assigned his own physician, a respected man called Galen, to look after his son. It’s likely the medicine man tried to pass on his learning to the young boy. Above all, this all meant that Commodus had a grisly interest in surgery; the bloodier and riskier the procedure, the more he liked it.
He even fancied himself as a surgeon and didn’t let a lack of scientific knowledge or proper medical training get in the way of acting out his fantasies. According to the Historia Augusta, “he even aped a surgeon, going so far as to bleed men to death with scalpels.” That’s right. For his own amusement, he would cut men open and subject them to unnecessary surgical procedures, all without the aid of anesthetic, of course. The fact that Commodus didn’t know what he was doing meant certain death for the poor slaves the boy chose to play surgeons on.