On Medicine

...most of them can perhaps be numbered among the calligraphers, but by no means among the learned. For no benefit can be sought from them for establishing the context of the speech, since they devoted their efforts solely to composing the ducts of the letters and the proportions of the pages elegantly. Otherwise, they are teeming with errors, and the ancient editions (especially the Florentine edition princeps of the year 1478 and the Aldine of 1528) are to be far preferred to them, however impure the sources from which they almost all flowed may have been: for no ancient editor utilized the two codices that are to be highly valued, namely the Vatican and the Florentine. Furthermore, thanks to the excellent kindness of the most learned Gersdorf, who oversees the Pauline Library among the Leipzigers, there was available to me a huge heap of notes of every kind and copies of different editions of Celsus full of annotations, all of which are owed to the extraordinary diligence of the most learned Kühn, who was planning a new edition of the Celsian work. But in truth, I was very close to wasting my oil and laborfrom the aspect of the secret: "wasting my oil and labor" is a classical idiom for "wasting my time and effort." in examining these collections.

The Hippocratic books, to which Celsus owed much, helped me quite often in correcting passages badly handled by scribes. So that you may recognize this, please inspect the Critical Annotation. Most editors place an index of Hippocratic passages cited by our author under Celsus; and I did not think I should act otherwise. I carefully compared each passage anew with Hippocrates as he was published by Littré, the great man) I have followed the distribution of the Hippocratic books into paragraphs proposed by the most learned Littré. With the kindness he is accustomed to, that most learned man shared with me the proofs from which the 9th volume of Hippocrates' Works will be published, which will come to light in a few months; from which it was permitted for me to cite the 2nd Book of the Prorrhetics* as if from this very edition.. To those passages which previous editions already provide, I have now finally added several more (cf. Index of passages of Hippocrates and Celsus compared with one another).

It does not escape me that the entire labor exerted on Celsus has only led me to the point where, under the guidance of Targa, or rather with better right than he, I am forced to confess: "The more we hasten to bring the work of Celsian emendation to an end, the more and greater difficulties we encounter which delay us longer than we had hoped" (Targa Morgagni; p. 489 in the Verona ed.).