The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800Buck, Albert H. (Albert Henry)
History
The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800
Buck, Albert H. (Albert Henry)
Medicine -- History
there are no nerve trunks and no muscles,--as on the forehead or
at the top of the head,--the simplest plan is to apply a cup at
some little distance from the source of the bleeding and thus
divert the current of the blood from the spot affected.
And to these two longer extracts may be added a third:--
From these considerations the inference is warranted that a
physician cannot possibly give proper attention to a large
number of patients. (Book III., Chapter IV.)
Celsus’ treatise was ignored by physicians for many centuries, but
it was considered by the monks, in the Middle Ages, a valuable
guide in the treatment of disease; and it was probably owing to
this circumstance, says Védrènes, that the book did not altogether
disappear. It was not until the year 1443 that Thomas de Sazanne,
afterward Pope Nicholas V., discovered a copy of the work in the church
of Saint Ambrosius, at Milan, but it was only in 1478 that the book was
printed for the first time (at Florence). Then, as if to make up for
the long neglect to which it had been subjected, no fewer than sixty
Latin editions were issued during the two succeeding centuries; and,
in addition, it was eventually translated into every modern European
language.
Scribonius Largus, a Roman physician who lived during the reigns
of Tiberius and Claudius (14–54 A. D.), owes his celebrity to the
fact that he wrote and published (in 47 A. D.) a book containing a
collection of the best medical formulae and popular recipes known at
that time. He appears to have had a large private practice and to have
spent a considerable portion of his professional life in the service
of the army. He accompanied the Emperor Claudius, for example, in his
campaign against Britain (43 A. D.), and the book which he wrote, and
which has just been mentioned, was dedicated by him to that emperor.
According to Neuburger, Scribonius is to be credited with having been
the first to describe correctly the proper manner of obtaining the drug
known as opium, and also the first to recommend, in the treatment of
severe headaches, the employment of electric shocks as communicated by
the fish called the “electric ray.”
Medical practice at that period, says Le Clerc, was divided among three
kinds of practitioners--those who treated their cases exclusively by
dietetic measures, those who effected cures by surgical means, and
those who took charge only of such patients as required chiefly the
employment of external remedies. But Scribonius Largus insists that
such a division was more theoretical than real, as no one of these
classes could get along without the cooperation of the others.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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