W. G. Spencer Celsus De Medicina Harvard Vol 1 2 3 I II III Loeb Classical 1960

Description: CELSUS DE MEDICINA WITH AN ENGLISH TRANSLATION BY W. G. SPENCER MS. LOND., F.R.C.S. ENG. IN THREE VOLUMES CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS LONDON WILLIAM HEINEMANN LTD MOMLX The Loeb Classical Library Complete 3 volume set - some damage & signs of age, some stamps with previous prices, volume 3 has sone damage on the edge of the back cover (see photos). Please look through photos for a good sense of vintage condition! Very readable! I found no writing on pages when looking through. INTRODUCTION: (By Dr. W. H. S. Jones, Fellow of St. Catharine's College, Cambridge) PracticalLy nothing is known of the life of the man whose name appears as the author of the medical treatise De Medicina. Recent research has made it likely that he was acquainted with the later poems of Ovid, and that he probably lived in Narbonensis. Quintilian, who describes Celsus as vir mediocri ingenio, informs us that he wrote on many other sub- jects besides medicine.a From this passage in Quintilian Marx has inferred that Celsus was a mere general editor of an encyclopaedia, and that he did not himself write the De Medicina, which can scarcely be regarded as the work of a man of mediocre intellect. Be this as it may, it appears likely that this medical book was but the second part of a large treatise containing six parts, the other five being: (1) Agriculture; (3) Military Arts; (4) Rhetoric; (5) Philosophy; (6) Jurisprudence. Not only Quintilian but also Pliny the elder refers to Celsus, who therefore lived in all probability in the reign of the Emperor Tiberius. Some would place his birth in the year 25 B.c. Aulus Cornelius Celsus. The tradition that A stands for Aurelius must be wrong, as Aurelius is not a praenomen. It is a disputed question whether the author of the work was a practising physician or not. It may be remarked in passing that in ancient times there was not such a sharp distinction between the professional and the amateur as there is to-day. The amount of medical knowledge was not so great as to be out of the range of an ordinary, educated man of average intelligence. On the one hand, it may be said that a work so complete and so accurate as the De Medicina must have come from the pen of a man with professional experience.& On the other hand, several reasons may be urged making the other view more probable. (1) The elder Pliny puts Celsus among the auctores, not among the medic. (2) Unseemly details are less frankly expressed than is usual among practising physicians. (3) A professional reader finds the handling of the subject in parts superficial and formal. (4) Certain passages dealing with surgical operations seem unlike the account of a man familiar with them from practical experience. (5) It was not unusual for a Roman gentleman to have a fairly intimate knowledge of medicine, which was useful to him as the head of a large household of slaves and freedmen. It is a possible, but an unproved hypothesis, that the De Medicina is a translation or rather adaptation of a Greek medical work, and that the seeming lapses from the professional standard are due to misunderstandings or to ignorant attempts at comment or explanation. The most obvious sources, however, are the Hippocratic Corpus, which still survives, and the lost works of Asclepiades, Heracleides, Erasistratus, and Meges of Sidon, a surgeon who lived a little earlier than Celsus. Wellmann supposes that Celsus translated a Greek treatise written by his friend Cassius; Marx believes that the Greek original was by Titus Aufidius Siculus, a pupil of Asclepiades. Of course the supposition that Celsus translated either of these two works is not inconsistent with references to Hippocrates and to the other physicians mentioned above. These may have been embodied in the text that Celsus is supposed to have had before him. The prooemium to the De Medicina is a most fair and judicious summary of the history of medicine, and deals at some length with the Dogmatic, the Methodic and the Empiric Schools. The writer himself tries to follow a via media between the Dogmatics and the Empirics. The work recognizes the importance of anatomy as a basis of medicine, and the anatomical knowledge displayed is sound. Stress is laid on diagnosis and prognosis, which it is said must precede treatment-a true Hippocratic touch. Drugs are recommended more than they are by Greek writers on medicine." On the other hand, all due importance is attached to general hygiene and to physical exercises. Scholars have noticed that sport is preferred to gymnastics, wherein the writer agrees with both Roman feeling and Roman practice. In the treatment of fevers the De Medicina is more empirical than usual. It " regards exclusively the clinicai picture and the empirical remedy." The style of the work has won the praise of Latinists in all ages. The whole book is remarkable for its symmetry and completeness, and the language is strong, lucid and elegant. It has been said with justice that the writer did for science what Cicero did for philosophy.

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