Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 1.djvu/678

Rh 6C0 CELSUS. preached the Christians as slaves of a blind belief, ill another with their numerous sects and ever- varying opinions. Sometimes he spoke of them as the slaves of their senses (SetAov Kcd (piKoadixaTov yevos), on another occasion as persons who rejected all external worship whatever. He was indignant that the Christian promises are offered to sinners, and said in reference to our Lord's coming to save them, tI Se toTs dvafiapri^Tois ovk fw4fi(p67i ; he also argued a priori against the doctrines of a special Providence, the Fall, and the Redemption, asserting that God made his work perfect once for all, and had no need to improve it afterwards. (Origenes, adv. Cels. ; Brucker, Hist. Crii. Phil. Per. ii., i. 1, 2, 8 ; Neander, Gesdiichte der Chrisil. Kirche, vol. i. sect. 2.) [G. E. L. C] CELSUS ALBINO VA'NUS, the secretary of Tib. Claudius Nero, and a friend of Horace, to whom the latter addressed one of his Epistles (i. 8). He is thought to be the same as the poet Celsus mentioned in another of Horace's Epistles (i. 3), in which he is said to have compiled his poems. from other persons' writings. He must not be confounded with the poet Pedo Albinovanus, the friend of Ovid. [Albinovanus.] CELSUS, APPULEIUS, a physician of Cen- turipa in Sicily, who was the tutor of Valens and Scribonius Largus (Scrib. Larg. De Compos. Medi- cam. capp. 94, 171), and who must therefore have lived about the beginning of the Christian era. He has been supposed to be the author of the work entitled Herbarium, seu de Medicaminibtis Her- barum, which goes under the name of Appuleius Barbarus [Appuleius], but this is probably not the case. He may, however, perhaps be the per- son who is ([uoted several times in the Geoponica, Cantab. 8vo. 1704. [W. A. G.] CELSUS, ARRU'NTIUS, an ancient com- mentator on Terence, who probably lived in the second half of the fourth century of the Christian aera. (Schopen, £>e Terentio el Donaio^ Bonn, 1821.) CELSUS, A.* CORNELIUS, a very celebrated Latin writer on medicine, of whose age, origin, or even actual profession, we know but little. There are some incidental expressions which lead to the conjecture, that he lived at the beginning of the Christian era, under the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius ; and particularly the mode in which he refers toThemison(Praef. lib.i. pp. 5, 9, iii. 4, p. 4 3) would indicate that they were either contempora- ries, or that Themison preceded him by a short period only. With respect to the country of Celsus (though he has been claimed as a native of Verona), we have nothiiig on which to ground our opinion, except the purity of his style, which at most would prove no more than that he had been educated or had passed a considerable part of his life at Rome. With regard to his profession, there is some reason to doubt whether he was a practitioner of medicine or whether he only studied it as a branch of general science, after the manner of some of the ancient Greek philosophers. This doubt has arisen princi- pally from the mode in which he is referred to by Columella de Re Rust. i. 1. 14) and by Quin- tilian (xii. 11), and by his not being enume- rated by Pliny among the physicians of Rome • It is not quite certain whether his praenomen wasAulus or Aurelius, but it is generally supposed to have been Aurelius, CELSUS. in his sketch of the history of medicine. (H. N. xxix. 1, &c.) But, on the other hand, his work appears to bear very strong evidence that he was an actual practitioner, that he was familiar with the phenomena of disease and the operation of remedies, and that he described and recommended what fell under his own observation, and was sanctioned by his own experience ; so that it seems upon the whole most probable that he was a phy- sician by profession, but that he devoted part of his time and attention to the cultivation of litera- ture and general science. Quintilian speaks rather slightingly of him, calls him (xii. 11) " mediocri vir ingenio," and says he not only wrote on all sorts of literary matters, but even on agriculture and military tactics. Of these numerous works only one remains entire, his celebrated treatise on Medicine; but a few fragments of a work on Rhetoric were published under his name in 1569, 8vo., Colon., with the title " Aurelii Cornelii Celsi, Rhetoris vetustissimi et clarissimi, de Arte Dicendi Libellus, primum in Lucem editus, curante Sixto a Popraa Phrysio." This little work is inserted by Fabricius at the end of his Bihliotheca Latino, where it fills about six small quarto pages, and is chiefly occupied with the works of Cicero. The treatise of Celsus " De Medicina," On Me- dicine, is divided into eight books. It commences with a judicious sketch of the history of medicine, terminating by a comparison of the two rival sects, the Dograatici and the Empirici, which has been given in the Diet, of Ant. pp. 350, 379. The first two books are principally occupied by the conside- ration of diet, and the general principles of thera- peutics and pathology; the remaining books are devoted to the consideration of particular diseases and their treatment; the third and fourth to in- ternal diseases ; the fifth and sixth to external diseases, and to pharmaceutical preparations ; and the last two to those diseases which more particu- larly belong to surgery. In the treatment of dis- ease, Celsus, for the most part, pursues the method of Asclepiades of Bithynia ; he is not, however, ser- vilely attached to him, and never hesitates to adopt any practice or opinion, however contrary to his, which he conceives to be sanctioned by direct ex- perience. He adopted to a certain extent the Hippocratic method of observing and watching over the operations of Nature, and of regulating rather than opposing them, — a method which, with respect to acute diseases, may frequently appear inert. But there are occasions on v/hich he dis- plays considerable decision and boldness, and par- ticularly in the use of the lancet, which he em- ployed with more freedom than any of his prede- cessors. His regulations for the employment of blood-letting and of purgatives are laid down with minuteness and precision (ii. 10, &c., p. 30, &c.) ; and, although he was in some measure led astray by his hypothesis of the crudity and concoction of the humours, the rules which he prescribed were not very different from those which were generally adopted in the commencement of the present cen- tury. His description of the sjnnptoms of fever, and of the different varieties which it assumes, either from the nature of the epidemic, or from the circumstances under which it takes place (iii. 3, &c., p. 43, &c.), are correct and judicious ; his practice was founded upon the principle already referred to, of watching the operations of Nature, conceiving that fever consisted essentially in an