Page:The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800.djvu/232

 Children's Diseases; Massage, Gymnastics, Sexual Hygiene, Bathing, etc.; Book II.—General Pathology, the Doctrine of Fevers, Semeiology; Book III.—Diseases of the Hair, Diseases of the Brain and Nerves, Diseases of the Eyes, Ears, Nose, Mouth, Teeth and Face; Book IV.—Leprosy, Skin Diseases, Inflammations, Swellings, Tumors, Wounds, Ulcers, Fistulae, Hemorrhage, Worms, Affections of the Joints, etc.; Book V.—Toxicology; Book VI.—Surgery; Book VII.—Materia Medica.

To furnish even a very superficial analysis of the contents of this treatise would call for more space than can well be given up here to such a purpose. I shall therefore simply mention a few points of special interest to which Neuburger calls attention in the course of his very full analysis of the work. He states, for example, that Paulus mentions several instances in which patients affected with lung disease, coughed up calculi or small stone-like masses. He also states that the same author was familiar with the fact that in the course of "phthisis," the pus may find its way into the bladder and there cause ulceration [in other words, that pus containing tubercle baccilli may flow down by way of the ureters and cause tuberculous ulceration of the bladder]. Paulus' theory regarding the origin of gout, adds Neuburger, is quite remarkable for that early period. He maintains, for example, that in persons who lead a rather inactive life and who are often affected with digestive disorders, there is produced, through the inadequate power of the tissues of the body to assimilate the excess of nutriment brought to them, a materies morbi which is drawn first to the parts that are weakest or least capable of resistance (the joints, for example) and then also to other structures, as the liver, spleen, throat, ears and teeth. These ideas—let it be remembered—were set down in writing in 650 A. D.

At the beginning of his analysis of Book VI., Neuburger makes this remark: "Although the description given by Paulus of the surgery of the ancients is based upon the writings of Hippocrates and Galen, as well as upon those of Leonides, Soranus and Antyllus, one finds at every step