Few individual instances are recorded in Greek history of surgical aid being afforded on the field of battle. One of the most interesting examples is that mentioned by Quintus Curtius in reference to Alexander the Great at the taking of the capital of the Oxydraceæ, or Mallians. The Macedonian King, who had leaped down, almost alone, within the walls of the fortress, was struck with a long arrow (duorum cubitorum sagitta), which entered the right side of the thorax (per thoracem paulum super latus dextrum infigeretur). The wound produced great hæmorrhage and faintness. Alexander was carried on his shield to his tent; and the shaft of the arrow being cut off and his cuirass removed, it was discovered that the head of the arrow was barbed, and could not, consequently, be removed without the artificial dilatation of the wound and imminent danger from increased bleeding; for the large weapon was fixed in its situation, and seemed to have penetrated into the internal viscera (quippe ingens telum adactum erat, et penetrasse in viscera videbatur). At Alexander’s request, the surgeon Critobulus undertook the extraction, enlarged the wound, and removed the arrow-head, which, according to Plutarch, was “three fingers broad and four long.” Great hæmorrhage (ingens vis sanguinis) attended the operation; death-like insensibility supervened; and, when the flow of blood continued in despite of the medicaments (medicamenta) applied, a cry and wail was set up by those around, that the king was dead. At last, however, the hæmorrhage stopped, under the state of syncope. That very syncope, observes Arrian, saved his life; and Alexander gradually recovered. But every modern surgeon must admire the boldness, not less than the expertness, of Critobulus, when he reflects for a moment on the fearful peril attendant on such an operation, performed on so august a patient—and at a time, too, when surgical science as yet possessed no certain means of restraining surgical hæmorrhage.[382] In the earlier periods of Roman history and Roman warfare, the treatment of the military sick and wounded was, in all probability, trusted to the casual care of some fellow-soldiers whose tastes and inclinations had led them to pay more than usual care to the rude surgery which existed at the time.[383] As early, however, as the commencement of the Christian era, we find Celsus laying down distinct, and in many instances very excellent and practical precepts for the extraction of war-weapons from the bodies of the wounded[384]—as of arrows, spears, leaden bullets (_glandes plumbeæ_), etc. Occasionally the weapons used in ancient war seem to have been forged for the special purpose of rendering their extraction by the surgeon a matter of difficulty and danger. At least we find Paulus Ægineta complaining that some of them have “their barbs diverging in opposite directions, like the forked lightning, in order that, whether pulled or pushed, they may fasten in the parts.”[385]