De Medicina
Celsus, Aulus Cornelius
Celsus, Aulus Cornelius. De Medicina. Spencer, Walter George, translator. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University; London, England: W. Heinemann Ltd, 1935-1938.
24 Again, worms also occasionally take possession of the bowel, and these are discharged at one time from the lower bowel, at another more nastily from the mouth: and we observe them sometimes to be flattened, which are the worse, at times to be rounded. For the flat worms there should be given as draughts, a decoction of lupins, of or of mulberry bark, to which may be added, after pounding, either hyssop or a vinegar cupful of pepper, or a little scammony. Alternatively on one day let him eat a quantity of garlic and vomit, then on the next day take a handful of fine pomegranate roots, crush them and boil them in a litre and a half of water down to one-
25 There is, again, another affection which the Greeks call tenesmos, slighter than all those last spoken of. It should be counted neither with acute nor with chronic diseases, since it is readily relieved, and never by itself fatal. As in the case of dysentery, there is equally the frequent desire for stool, and equally the pain when anything is passed. There is a discharge resembling phlegm and mucus; sometimes it is even slightly bloodstained; but mingled with properly formed faeces derived from food. The patient should sit in hot water, and make application frequently to his anus. For this there are several suitable medicaments; butter in rose oil, gum acacia dissolved in vinegar; that wax-salve which the Greeks call tetrapharmacon, made liquid with rose oil; alum wrapped up in wool and so applied; the same clysters as are beneficial in dysentery; the same decoction of vervains to foment the lower parts. He should drink on alternate days water and a thin dry wine
26 Even slighter, while recent, is diarrhoea, in which the stool is liquid and more frequent than ordinary; and sometimes the pain is bearable, at times very severe, when it is a worse affair. But a flux from the bowel for one day is often salutary, and even for several days, provided that fever is absent and it subsides within seven days. For the body is purged, and whatever is about to cause a complaint inside is evacuated with advantage. But persistence is the danger; for it excites at times dysentery and feverishness and exhausts strength. It is sufficient on the first day to rest, and not to check the movement of the bowels. If it stops of itself, the patient should make use of the bath, and take a little food; if it persists, he should abstain, not only from for, but even from drink. If on the day following, in spite of all, the stool is still liquid, he should rest as before and take a little astringent food. On the third day he should go to the bath; be rubbed all over vigorously except the abdomen, sit with his loins and shoulder-blades before a fire; take food of an astringent kind, and a little undiluted wine. If on the fourth day the flux persists, he should eat more but provoke a vomit afterwards, and counter in a general way the diarrhoea by thirst, hunger and vomiting, until it subsides for it is scarcely possible that after so attending to it, the bowel will not be controlled. Another method to suppress the diarrhoea is to dine and then vomit; the next day to rest in bed, in the evening to be anointed, but lightly, then to eat about half a pound of bread soaked in undiluted Aminaean wine; after that something roasted, poultry in par=
27 From the womb of a woman, also, there arises a violent malady; and next to the stomach this organ is affected the most by the body, and has the most influence upon it. At times it makes the woman so insensible that it prostrates her as if by epilepsy. The case, however, differs from epilepsy, in that the eyes are not turned nor is there foaming at the mouth nor spasm of sinews; there is merely stupor. In some women this attack recurs at frequent intervals and lasts throughout life. When this happens, if there is sufficient strength, blood-letting is beneficial; if too little, yet cups should be applied to the groins. If she lies prostrate for a long while, or if she has done so at other times, hold to her nostrils an extinguished lamp wick, or some other of these materials which I have referred to as having a specially foetid odour (III.20, 1), to arouse the woman. For the same end, affusion with cold water is also effectual. And there is benefit from rue pounded up with honey, or from a wax-salve made up with cyprus oil or from hot moist plasters of some sort applied to the external genitals as far as the pubes. At the same time also the hips and the backs of the knees should be rubbed. Then when she has come to herself, she should be cut off from wine for a whole year, even if a similar attack does not recur. Friction should be applied daily to the whole body, but particularly to the abdomen and behind the knees. Food of the middle class should be given: every third or fourth day mustard is to be applied over the hypogastrium until the skin is reddened. If induration
. . . constricting remedies. White olives also produce the same effect, also black poppy seeds, taken
But when the urine exceeds in quantity the fluid taken, even if it is passed without pain, it gives rise to wasting and danger of consumption; if it is thin, there is need for exercise and rubbing, particularly in the sun and before a fire. The baths should be taken but seldom, and the patient should not stay in it for long; the food should be astringent, the wine dry and undiluted, cold in summer, lukewarm in winter, and in quantity the monument required to allay thirst. The bowels also are to be moved by a clyster or by taking milk. If the urine is thick, exercise and rubbing should be more though, and the patient should stay longer in the bath; food and wine should be of the lighter kind. In both affections, everything that promotes urine should be avoided.
28 There is also a complaint about the genitals, an excessive outflow of semen; which is produced without coition, without nocturnal apparitions, so that in course of time the man is consumed by wasting. Salutary remedies in this affection are: vigorous rubbings, affusions, swimming in quite cold water; no food and drink taken unless cold. He should, moreover, avoid everything
29 It remains for me to come to the extremities of the body which are interconnected by joints. I begin with the hips. In these severe pain is wont to occur, and this often weakens the patient, and some it never leaves: and on this account it is a difficult class to treat, for it is generally after chronic diseases that a pestiferous force directs itself to the hip; which, as it releases other parts, seizes upon this, which now becomes the seat of the disease. The hip is to be first fomented with hot water, after which hot plasters are applied. Those which appear to be especially beneficial are these: caper bark chopped up and mixed either with barley meal or with fig decoction, or darnel meal boiled in diluted wine and mixed with sour wine lees: since these are apt to grow cold, by night it is better to put on emollients. Inula root also pounded and afterwards boiled in dry wine and applied widely of the hip is among the most efficacious of remedies. If these do not resolve the trouble, then hot moist salt is to be employed. If even these measures do not end the pain, and a swelling supervenes, the skin is incised and cups are to be applied; diuretics are given; and the bowels if costive are to be clystered.
30 Next to the hips come the knees, in which pain now and again occurs, and these same plasters and cuppings are a safeguard, as also when any pain arises in the shoulder or other joints. Riding on horseback is of all things the most injurious to anyone with painful knees. All such pains, when of long standing, are hardly ever ended except by cauterization.
31 Joint troubles in the hands and feet are very frequent and persistent, such as occur in cases of podagra and cheiragra. these seldom attack eunuchs or boys before coition with a woman, or women except those in whom the menses have become suppressed. Upon the commencement of pain blood should be let; for when this is carried out at once in the first stages it ensures health, often for a year, sometimes for always. Some also, when they have washed themselves out by drinking asses' milk, evade this disease in perpetuity; some have obtained lifelong
32 Now from whatever disease he is recovering, if his convalescence is slow, the patient ought to keep awake from dawn, but nevertheless stay at rest in bed: about nine o'clock he should be gently stroked over with anointed hands, after that by way of amusement, and as long as he pleases, walk, all business being omitted: then he should use conveyances for a good while, be rubbed much, often change his residence, climate and diet. Having taken wine for three or four days, he should for one or two days drink water only. For thus he will ensure that he does not lapse into a complaint which causes wasting, but soon gets back his full strength. When he has, in fact, completely recovered, it will be dangerous for him suddenly to change his way of life and to act without restraint. Therefore he should only little by little leave off what has been prescribed, and pass to a way of life of his own choosing.
I have spoken of those maladies of the body in which the regulation of the diet is most helpful: now I pass on to that part of medicine which combats rather by medicaments. These were held of high value by ancient writers, both by Erasistratus and those who styled themselves Empirics, especially how by Herophilus and his school, insomuch that they treated no kind of disease without them. A great deal has also been recorded concerning the powers of medicaments, as in the works of Zeno or of Andreas or of Apollonius, surnamed Mys. On the other hand, Asclepiades dispense with the use of these for the most part, not without reason; and since nearly all medicaments harm the stomach and content bad juices, he transferred all his treatment rather to the management of the actual diet. But while in most diseases that is the more useful method, yet very many illnesses attack our bodies which cannot be cured without medicaments. This before all things it is well to recognize, together, that it is impossible to separate off any
But since all medicaments have special powers, and afford relief, often when simple, often when mixed, it does not seem amiss beforehand to state both their names and their virtues and how to compound them, that there may be less delay when we are describing the treatment itself.
1 The following suppress bleeding: Blacking with the Greeks call chalcanthon, copper ore, acacia, and lycium with water, frankincense, lign-aloe, gums, lead sulphide, leek, polygonum; Cimolian chalk or potter's clay, antimony sulphide; cold water, wine, vinegar; alum from Melos, iron and copper scales and of this last there are two kinds, one from ordinary copper, the other from red copper.
2 The following agglutinate a wound: myrrh, frankincense, gums, especially gum arabic; fleawort, tragacanth, cardamon, bulbs, linseed, nasturtium; white of egg, glue, isinglass; white vine, snails pounded with their shells, cooked honey, a sponge squeezed out of cold water or out of wine or out of vinegar; unscoured wool squeezed out of the same; if the wound is slight, even cobwebs.
The following subdue inflammation: alum, both split alum called schiston, and alum brine; quince oil, orpiment, verdigris, copper ore, blacking.
3 The following mature abscessions and promote suppuration: nard, myrrh, costmary, balsam, galbanum, propolis, storax, frankincense, both the soot and the bark, bitumen, pitch, sulphur, resin, suet, fat, oil.
4 The following open, as it were, mouths in our bodies, called in Greek stomou=n: cinnamon, balsam, all-heal; rush-root, pennyroyal, white violet flowers, bdellium, galbanum, turpentine and pine-resin, propolis, old olive-oil; pepper, pyrethrum, ground pine thistle, black bryony berries, sulphur, alum, rue seed.
5 The following have a cleaning effect: verdigris, orpiment, called by the Greeks arsenicon now this has the same property as sandarach, but copper scales are stronger, pumice; orris root, balsam, storax, frankincense, frankincense bark, pine-resin and liquid turpentine, vine-flowers; lizard dung, blood of pigeon and wood pigeon and swallow; ammoniacum, bdellium which has the same virtue as ammoniacum, but southernwood is more powerful, dry fig, Cnidian berry, powdered ivory, omphacium, radish; rennet, especially of the hare which has the same faculty as other rennet but is far more active, ox-bile, uncooked yolk of e.g., burnt stagshorn, ox-glue, raw honey, antimony sulphide, copper ore; saffron, black bryony berries, southernwood, litharge, oak-gall, haematite, minium, costmary, sulphur, crude pitch, suet, fat, oil, rue, leek, lentil, bitter vetch.
6 The following are erodents: alum brine, especially when made from round alum, verdigris, copper
7 The following are exedents: acacia juice, ebony, verdigris, copper scales, chrysocolla, ash, cyprus ash, soda, cadmia, litharge, hypocistis, slag, salt, orpiment, sulphur, hemlock, sandarach, salamander-ash, coral, flowers of copper, copper ore, blacking, ochre, lime, vinegar, oak-gall, alum, milk of the wild fig, or of sea spurge which the Greeks call tithymallos, coral, bile, frankincense, spode, lentil, honey, olive leaves, horehound, haematite stone, Phrygian, Assian and ironschist, antimony sulphide, wine, vinegar.
8 The following are caustics: orpiment, blacking, copper ore, antimony sulphide, verdigris, lime, burnt papyrus-ash, salt, copper scales, burnt wine-lees, myrrh, dung of lizard and pigeon and wood pigeon and swallow, pepper, Cnidian berry, garlic, slag, both the milks mentioned in the previous chapter, hellebore both white and black, cantharides, coral, pyrethrum, frankincense, salamander-ash, rocket, sandarach, black bryony berries, chrysocolla, ochre, split alum, sheep's dung, vine-flower buds.
9 The foregoing generally induce scabs on ulcerations almost as when burnt by a cautery, but most of all copper ore — especially after being heated — copper flowers, verdigris, orpiment, antimony sulphide, and that also more after being heated.