120 Greek Medicine 



of the best Alexandrian practice. The pharmacopoeia is more 

 copious, but has not yet become burdensome. The general 

 line of treatment is sensible and humane and the language 

 concise and clear. Among other items he describes dental 

 practice, with the indications for and methods of tooth extrac- 

 tion, the wiring of teeth, and perhaps a dental mirror. There 

 is an excellent account of what might be thought to be the 

 modern operation for removal of the tonsils. Celsus is still 

 commemorated in modern medicine by the area Celsi, a not 

 uncommon disease of the skin. The De re medica is in fact 

 one of the very best medical text-books that have come down 

 to us from antiquity. It has had a romantic history. Forgotten 

 during the Middle Ages, it was brought to light by the classical 

 scholar Guarino of Verona (1374-1460) in 1426, and a better 

 copy was discovered by his friend Lamola in 1427. Another 

 copy was found by Thomas Parentucelli (1397-1455), after- 

 wards Pope Nicholas V in 1443, and the text was later studied 

 by Politian (1454-94). Though one of the latest of the great 

 classical medical texts to be discovered, it was one of the first 

 to be printed (Florence, 1478), and it ran through very many 

 early editions and had great influence on the medical renais- 

 sance. 



After Celsus comes Dioscorides in the first century A. D. 

 He was a Greek military surgeon of Cilician origin who served 

 under Nero, and in him the Greek intellect is obviously begin- 

 ning to flag. His work is prodigiously important for the history 

 of botany, yet so far as rational medicine is concerned he is 

 almost negligible. He begins at the wrong end, either giving 

 lists of drugs with the symptoms that they are said to cure or 

 to relieve, or lists of symptoms with a series of named drugs. 

 Clinical observation and record are wholly absent, and the spirit 

 of Hippocrates has departed from this elaborate pharmacopoeia. 



With the second century of the Christian era we terminate 

 the creative period of Greek medicine. We are provided with 



