Celsus has given us a good description of the qualities which a surgeon ought to possess: he should be young, or at any rate not very old; his hand should be firm and steady, and never shake; he should be able to use his left hand with as much dexterity as his right; his sight should be acute and clear; his mind intrepid and pitiless, so that when he is engaged in doing anything to a patient, he may not hurry, nor cut less than he ought, but finish the operation just as if the cries of the patient made no impression upon him.[468] Celsus said,[469] “It is both cruel and superfluous to dissect the bodies of the living, but to dissect those of the dead is necessary for learners, for they ought to know the position and order, which dead bodies show better than a living and wounded man. But even the other things, which can only be observed in the living, practice itself will show in the cures of the wounded, a little more slowly, but somewhat more tenderly.” He wrote on history, philosophy, oratory, and jurisprudence, and this in the most admirable style. THESSALUS of Tralles (A.D. 60) was the talented son of a weaver, who became a “natural” doctor. He was an utterly ignorant, bragging charlatan, with great natural ability. Had Paracelsus received no education, he might have practised medicine as a second Thessalus of Tralles. He scorned science as much as Paracelsus loved it, but like him he abused in the most violent manner all the physicians of antiquity. He called them all bunglers, and himself the “Conqueror of Physicians” (ἰατροίκης). He declared to Nero that his predecessors had contributed nothing to the progress of the science. He flattered the great and wealthy, and vaunted his ability to teach anybody the healing art in six months. He surrounded himself with a great crowd of disciples—rope-makers, cooks, butchers, weavers, tanners, artisans of all sorts. All these he permitted to practise on his patients, and to kill them with impunity. Since his time, says Sprengel, the Roman physicians gave up the custom of visiting their patients when accompanied by their pupils.[470] He used colchicum in the treatment of gout. PHILUMENUS (about A.D. 80) was a famous writer on obstetrics, and described the appropriate treatment for the various kinds of diarrhœa. ANDROMACHUS THE ELDER (A.D. 60) of Crete was the inventor of a famous cure-all called _Theriaca_. It was compounded of some sixty drugs. He was physician to Nero, and his two works περὶ συνθεσέως φαρμάκων were greatly praised by Galen.