THE SIXTH BOOK OF THE ARTS OF

AURELIUS CORNELIUS CELSUS, WHICH IS

THE FIRST BOOK OF MEDICINE.

H Just as agriculture promises food to healthy bodies, so medicine promises health to the sick. Indeed, this is found nowhere without it. For even the most unskilled peoples know herbs and other things ready at hand for the aid of wounds and diseases. Nevertheless, among the Greeks, it has been cultivated somewhat more than in other nations. And not even among them from the very beginning, but only a few centuries before us; since the most ancient author, Aesculapius, is celebrated. Because he cultivated this science, which was still rough and common, a little more subtly, he was received into the number of the gods. Then his two sons, Podalirius and Machaon, following their leader Agamemnon to the Trojan War, brought no mediocre help to their fellow soldiers. Yet Homer proposed that they did not bring any help for pestilence or various kinds of diseases, but were accustomed to treat wounds only with iron and medicines. From this, it appears that these parts of medicine alone were attempted by them, and that they are the most ancient. And by the same author, it can be learned that diseases were then referred to the anger of the immortal gods, and that help was accustomed to be sought from them. And it is likely that among various aids for ill health, it usually turned out well because of good character, which neither sloth nor luxury had yet corrupted. For these two [vices] have afflicted bodies first in Greece, and then among us. Therefore, that complex medicine, which was neither necessary long ago among the Greeks nor among other peoples, barely leads some of the good to the beginnings of old age. Therefore, even after those about whom I have spoken, several famous men practiced medicine, until the discipline of letters began to be agitated with greater study. Which, just as it is necessary for the soul above all, is so hostile to the body. At first, the science of healing was considered a part of philosophy, so that both the cure of diseases and the contemplation of the nature of things were born under the same authors. Certainly, because those who had diminished the strength of their bodies through quiet contemplation and nightly vigil required this most. And so we have accepted that many of the professors of philosophy were skilled in it. The most famous of these, however, were Pythagoras, Empedocles, and Democritus. But as some have believed, a student of the latter, Hippocrates of Cos, the first of all worthy of memory, separated this discipline from the study of philosophy—a man distinguished in both art and eloquence. After him, Diocles of Carystus, then Praxagoras, and Chrysippus,