Celsus: On Medicine, Vol. III

Gorgias also, and Sostratus and Heron, and the two Apollonii, and Ammonius the Alexandrian The Alexandrian school of medicine flourished from the third century B.C., and many other celebrated men, each discovered certain things. And at Rome, too, there were professors of no mean standing, especially recently Tryphon the father and Euelpistus and, as can be understood from his writings, Meges, the most learned of them, who added considerably to this discipline by changing certain things for the better.

4 A surgeon must be a young man or at least closer to youth; with a strong, steady hand that never trembles, and ready to use the left hand no less than the right; with sharp and clear eyesight; undaunted in spirit; and so compassionate that he wishes to cure the one he has taken charge of, yet is not moved by his cries to hurry more than the situation demands, or to cut less than is necessary; but he should do everything just as if no emotion were aroused by the screams of another.

5 It may be asked what properly belongs to this part, because surgeons claim for themselves the treatments of many wounds and ulcers, which I have executed elsewhere original: "V. 26 seqq.". I conceive that the same man can indeed provide all these things; and where they have divided themselves, I praise him who has grasped the most. For myself, I have left to this part those cases in which the physician makes a wound, rather than receives one, and those wounds and ulcers in which I believe more is accomplished by hand than by medicament; then, whatever pertains to the bones. These I shall proceed to set forth in order, and having deferred the bones to another volume Book VIII, I shall explain the rest in this one.