Celsus's De Medicina

Almost nothing is known of Aulus Cornelius Celsus. Pliny the Elder and Quintilian refer to him, so he probably lived under the emperor Tiberius, and some place his birth in 25 BCE. De Medicina seems to have been one part of a larger encyclopedia that also covered agriculture, the military arts and law. Whether Celsus practiced is disputed. Pliny listed him among writers, not physicians, but a 2013 study of his surgical chapters concluded that he probably operated at least within his own family and household.

His preface traces medicine's division into three parts, treatment by diet, by drugs and by hand. Books VII and VIII deal with surgery. The preface also weighs the rival schools. One held that physicians must know hidden causes and the inner organs, and praised Herophilus and Erasistratus for opening criminals alive, received from the kings out of prison. The Empirici answered that experience was enough. Celsus judged that medicine should be rational but built on evident causes, and that opening the living was as cruel as it was needless, while dissecting the dead was necessary for learners.

In Book III, on fevers and their treatment, he stated that the signs of an inflammation are four: redness and swelling with heat and pain. In the same passage he faulted Erasistratus for claiming that no fever occurs without inflammation. The surgical books describe operations in detail, and a 2018 history of varicocele opens with his description of swollen, twisted veins over a testicle that becomes smaller.

The book was forgotten for centuries. According to a 2013 review, a manuscript came to light in 1443 through the man who became Pope Nicholas V, and the first printed edition appeared at Florence in 1478. The editor of the Loeb translation counted 49 printed editions down to 1841.