Complete Works of Celsus, Vitruvius, Censorinus, and Frontinus

CELSE.

this is done, one must then prescribe substances that best resist any alteration. For the same reason, when one observes difficulty in breathing, lethargy, or insomnia, it will be possible to indicate the remedy if one has been able to penetrate the intimate conditions of these various states in advance. Furthermore, as pain and diseases of different kinds can invade our internal organs, they see no means of restoring them to their integrity if one does not know their structure. There is therefore a necessity to devote oneself to the opening of cadavers to scrutinize the viscera and the entrails; and indeed, Herophilus and Erasistratus acted much better by opening, while still alive, the criminals whom kings released to them from prisons, in order to seize on the spot what nature kept hidden from them, and to arrive at knowing the situation of the organs, their color, their form, their size, their arrangements, their degree of consistency or softness, the polished state of their surface, their relationships, their projections and their depressions; and finally, to see which parts insert themselves into others, or which, on the contrary, receive others into their midst. Indeed, when an internal pain occurs, can one designate its seat exactly if one ignores the position of the viscera and the parts situated internally? And how can one treat a diseased organ of which one does not even have an idea? If a wound, for example, lays bare the viscera, one who does not know the natural coloration of each part will not know how to distinguish the state of integrity from the state of alteration, and will therefore be unable to remedy the lesion. The application of external medications also becomes more effective when the seat, the form, and the size of the internal organs are well determined. All these considerations apply equally to the things stated above. There is therefore no cruelty, as has been claimed, in seeking, in the torture of a small number of criminals, the means of preserving innocent generations from age to age.

Those, on the contrary, who call themselves Empiricists because they rely on experience, do indeed consider the knowledge of evident causes as necessary; but they maintain that it is idle to agitate the question of occult causes and the actions of the body, given that nature is impenetrable. The proof that one cannot understand it is the discord that reigns in this discussion, since neither philosophers nor physicians have ever been able to agree on this point. Indeed, why side with the sentiment of Hippocrates rather than that of Herophilus, or with that of Herophilus rather than with the opinion of Asclepiades? If one has regard for reasoning, they all seem equally plausible; if one takes account of cures, all the physicians have brought patients back to health. One cannot therefore reject the objections or the authority of one or the other. If the art of reasoning made physicians, there would be none greater than philosophers; but they have an excess of the science of words, and do not possess the science that heals. Medicine, moreover, varies according to location, and will be different in Rome, in Egypt, or in Gaul: yet if the same causes everywhere engender similar diseases, the same remedies should be suitable everywhere. Often, the cause also shows itself to be evident, as in the cases of ophthalmia and wounds, without that leading...