Complete Works of Celsus, Vitruvius, Censorinus, and Frontinus

Faithful to this spirit of eclecticism selecting the best from various systems, one sees him preserve himself from the encroachments of systems, and maintain his independence toward the greatest reputations. Thus, despite his veneration for Hippocrates, whom he proclaims the greatest physician of antiquity and the father of all medicine, he does not hesitate to take the side against him of Asclepiades, who mocks the old man of Cos for his critical days and his Pythagorean numbers. But the turn of Asclepiades does not wait, and Celsus, who takes him also for a model in many places, does not fear nevertheless to reproach him for inconsistent and mendacious opinions. The physician of Prusa boasted, as is known, of curing all maladies tuto, celeriter et jucunde "safely, quickly, and pleasantly". Now, according to him, the best remedy against fever being the fever itself, he thought that, in order to abate the forces of the sick, one had to expose him to light, fatigue him with insomnia, and make him endure thirst; to the point that, the first days, he did not even allow one to rinse one's mouth. "That," says Celsus, "proves all the better the error of those who imagine that his method is agreeable in all things; for if later he yielded to the sick even to abandoning them to their intemperance, it is no less true that at the beginning he behaved like a torturer." Does it concern the methodists? He strongly highlights the inconstancy of their principle, and even declares them inferior to the empirics, given that the latter borrow many things in their examination, while the disciples of Themison limit themselves to the easiest and most vulgar observation. They consider in maladies only the general state of tightening and relaxation. "They act in this like veterinarians, who, not being able to learn the speech of mute animals—which is what is relative to each of them—insist only on general characters. This is what foreign nations also do, who, in their ignorance of any rational medicine, do not go beyond some general data. So also do the nurses, who, finding themselves unable to prescribe a suitable regimen for each patient, submit them all to a common regimen." These words, to be sure, do not accuse a very great partiality for the methodists; but he shows himself no less freed from all systematic influence, whether he signals the deviations of the dogmatists physicians who seek hidden causes of disease or of the empirics, or whether he has to judge the ideas of Herophilus and Erasistratus, or the contemporary opinions of a certain number of practitioners who at the time had a name in science. He summarizes, finally, his medical profession of faith in the following manner: "I think that medicine must be rational, by not drawing its indications, however, except from evident causes; the search for occult causes being able to exercise the mind of the physician, but having to be banished from the practice of the art. I think also that it is at once useless and cruel to open living bodies, but that it is necessary for those who cultivate the science to deliver themselves to the dissection of cadavers; for they must know the seat and the disposition of the organs, objects that cadavers represent to us more exactly than the living and wounded man." After having made known the path he wishes to follow, he presents to us methodically the dietary precepts of Hippocrates and also those of Asclepiades, insists on walking, the various sorts of gestation, bodily exercises, baths, anointings, reading aloud; prescribes rules according to ages, seasons, temperaments, infirmities; gives us likewise the history of surgery since Hippocrates—which alone would make him, for us at least, a great physician of antiquity—and the bilateral stone-cutting operation; precious, he describes first the version of the man and that of the woman; learns to dilate the orifice of the uterus by engaging first the index finger, then successively the whole hand and, in certain cases, both hands, performs the delivery of the woman by making managed tractions on the umbilical cord to avoid breaking it, while, with the right hand, he accompanies this cord until the placenta, which he detaches.

One could arrive without difficulty at multiplying the examples that testify to the practical good sense of the author, but what is almost a subject of astonishment is to encounter at once in a book of antiquity this talent of analysis that takes account of the slightest details, and this exercised judgment that knows how to place facts in their true light, and give to each its real value. It is true that his critical spirit, coming then to judge science as a whole, often leads the writer to doubt or even to incredulity. Thus, we see him declare clearly that medicine is a conjectural art, which, in many cases, is betrayed not only by theory but also by practice (book 1, pref.). In another place he recalls that in the midst of all the resources of the art, it is still the power of nature that makes itself felt the most. On the occasion of maladies of the eyes, he expresses thus his little belief in medications that are too praised: "In summary, when one reads all that physicians have written and attached to this subject, it is easy to recognize that, among the affections of which we have spoken, there is perhaps not one that one could not cure as well by very simple remedies, and which are found so to speak under the hand." (VI, 6, 39.) Elsewhere still, this exclamation escapes him: "So true it is that in medicine results are not always in conformity with the most constant rules!"
We have already understood that this is not the blind skepticism of people of the world, strong minds whom sickness makes so weak, but rather the...