A. CORNELIUS CELSUS

ON MEDICINE

BOOK VII

PROOEMIUM

It is well known, and I have previously proposed original: "prooem." 9, that there is a third part of medicine which cures by hand original: chirurgia surgery. This branch does not ignore medicaments and the regimen of diet, but it achieves the most by hand, and its effect is the most evident among all parts of medicine. For in the case of diseases, since fortune contributes much, and the same things are often salutary and often vain, one may doubt whether health returned as a benefit of medicine or of the body or... Marx adds "of fortune" before "benefit". Furthermore, in those cases where we rely mostly on medicaments, although improvement is more evident, it is often manifest that health is sought in vain by these means and restored without them: just as can be observed in the eyes, which, after being long troubled by doctors, sometimes heal without them. But in that part which cures by hand, every improvement is evident, and although it is aided somewhat by other things, it nevertheless draws most from this. Although this part is very ancient, it was nevertheless more cultivated by Hippocrates, that parent of all medicine, than by his predecessors. Later, after it was separated from the others and began to have its own professors, it grew especially in Egypt under the influence of Philoxenus, who in many volumes covered this part most diligently.