Of medicine : in eight books / A. Cornelius Celsus ; trsnslated with notes, critical and explanatory by James Grieve ; carefully revised, with additional notes, by George Futvoye.

  • Celsus, Aulus Cornelius, 25 B.C.- A.D. 50.
Date:
1838
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Of medicine : in eight books / A. Cornelius Celsus ; trsnslated with notes, critical and explanatory by James Grieve ; carefully revised, with additional notes, by George Futvoye. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    times a gladiator on the stage, a soldier in the field, or a traveller beset by robbers, is so wounded, that some internal part, different in different people, may be exposed to view; and thus a prudent physician finds their situation, position, order, figure, and the other particulars he wants to know, not perpetrating murder, but attempting to give health ; and learns that by compassion, which others had discovered by horrid cruelty. That for these reasons itisnot necessary to lacerate even dead bodies ; which, though not cruel, yet may be shocking to the sight, since most things are different in dead bodies ; and even the dressing of wounds shows all that can be discovered in the living. Since these points have often been, and still continue to be dis- puted with great warmth, by physicians, in large volumes, it is proper to add some reflections, that may seem to come the nearest to the truth, and which neither slavishly follow either of these opinions, nor are too remote from both, but, as it were, intermediate between these opposite extremes; which those that inquire after truth without partiality, may find to be the surest method for directing the judgment in most warm controversies, as well as in this nowr beiore us. For w ith legatd to the causes of health or diseases, in what manner the aii, or food, is either conveyed or distributed, the philosophers them- selves do not attain to an absolute certainty, they only make probable conjectures. Now, when there is no certain knowledge of a thing, a mere opinion about it cannot discover a sure remedy. And it must be owned, that nothing is of greater use, even to the rational method of curing, than experience. Although, then, many things are taken into the study of arts, which do not, properly speaking, belong to the arts themselves, yet they may greatly improve them by quickening the genius of the artist, wherefore the contemplation of nature, though it cannot make a man a physician, yet. may render him fitter lor the practice of medicine. Indeed, it is very probable, that both Hippocrates and Erasistratus, and all the others, who were not content with treating fevers and ulcers, but examined, in some measure, into the nature of things, though they did not by such study become physicians, yet became more able physicians by that means. And medicine itself requires the help of reason, if not always amongst the occult causes, or the natural actions, yet olten ; foi