Complete Works of Celsus, Vitruvius, Censorinus, and Frontinus

if one must speak without beating about the bush, there would be more than one page to cite where, among other inaccuracies, the qui "who/which" and the que "that/whom" are lavished with such carelessness regarding the regimen of the sentence that, without the assistance of the reader... of these imperfections which one points out here only with regret and only because the subject requires it, the work of the notable merits being the first and, until this day, the only one that had for its goal the spreading among us of the knowledge of the Treatise on Medicine.

In 1821, the bookseller Delalain, wanting to publish a new edition of Celsus, put it into the care of a doctor of medicine, who hastened to adopt the text of the first edition of Targa, and reproduced at the same time the translation of H. Ninnin. This physician, of whom the enlightened judgment on the learned editor of Celsus was cited above, had, it is true, the intention of rejuvenating the somewhat archaic French of his predecessor; but, remaining completely enslaved to the same turns of phrase, he thought he did enough by replacing old expressions with others less obsolete. Then, this task accomplished, he did not notice, or did not want to see, that a translation conforming to the editions of Van der Linden and Almeloveen could only very imperfectly answer the text of Targa; now, this lack of correspondence becomes all the more sensible as he placed the Latin alongside it. He undertook, however, to translate the dissertation of Bianconi himself, and joined it to this new 12mo edition.

This physician, moreover, did not deceive himself as to the value of his work, and never wanted to deceive the public, since he names Henri Ninnin in full letters, and is content, for himself, with the initial L.....

One would be tempted nevertheless to blame him for this

reserve; for it only served to favor a third publication, of which it is necessary to say a few words in ending this notice.

How, in effect, to avoid the obligation to warn the reader that a certain translation of the Treatise on Medicine, which appeared in 1824, and was given to us as entirely new, is nevertheless (though under other names (1) and in a different format) only the reproduction of H. Ninnin, modified by Mr. L......? That is what the simplest examination shows with such evidence that it is perhaps useless to add that all the errors of meaning that one believed one recognized in these first two editions were noted in the margin of the translation that Mr. Doctor Ratier did not believe he should disavow.

"When those of Rhodes," says an old book, "wanted to honor the memory of someone, they were content to put a new head on an old statue of their city." It is by an artifice almost similar that the physician in question, desirous, it seems, to honor himself, was content to place his head on the discreet shoulders of Messrs. L..... and Ninnin, who already were one and the same. Now, it follows from this that we have three names for the same translation; and many people, in the comparison, there will be, according to this bizarre process, three heads for a single bust; and many people, then, will be able to imagine that it is a great deal.

(1) Those who know the natural benevolence of Mr. Fouquier will not hesitate to believe him completely disinterested in the question. It is hardly permitted to doubt that he would have only wanted to support with the authority of his name the first attempts of a young physician. One has moreover a more conclusive reason to see here only Mr. Ratier: it is that he himself, in the Encyclopédie des gens du monde Encyclopedia of People of the World (article Celsus), speaks only in his own private name, and without joining thereto that of Mr. Fouquier, of his new translation.