Page:The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800.djvu/184

 excepting those relating to the latter science, have been lost or destroyed. It is not certainly known to which of the professions Celsus belonged, but the very skilful and judicious manner in which he has culled all that is best from the medical treatises published before his time, the remarkable knowledge of technical details which he displays in every part of his own work, and the fine tone of medical thought which pervades these eight books, almost compel the conclusion that the author was a very clever clinician, although probably not a physician who practiced for a money reward. In no other published treatise is a more perfect picture of the medical practice of antiquity to be found than that which Celsus gives us in his work "De arte medica libri octo."

It is not an easy matter to select, from a treatise of several hundred pages in length, one or two passages of such a character that they may be accepted as fairly representing the author's manner of dealing with medical and surgical questions of practical interest. The two given below are translations from Védrènes' version (Paris, 1876), and they deal, the one with venesection and the other with the proper manner of arresting hemorrhage from a wound. Both the passages quoted represent only fragments, as sufficient space for more extensive extracts is not available.

Book II., Chapter X.—Bloodletting from a Vein.—Incising a vein for the purpose of drawing blood from it, is not a new procedure; but it is certainly a new thing to resort to bloodletting in almost all diseases. Again, it is an ancient custom to employ bloodletting in young subjects and in women who are not pregnant, but it is a new thing to perform this operation on infants and aged individuals, and on women approaching the period of confinement. It was the idea of the ancients that persons at the two extremes of life were not able to support this sort of treatment, and they were convinced that a pregnant woman, if subjected to the operation of bloodletting, would almost surely be confined before the completion of her time. Since then, however, experience has shown that there is no fixed rule about this matter, and that a physician should preferably regulate his course in accordance with observations of a different nature. The determining factor,