Timeline: Celsus, c. 25 BCE–50CE

Celsus (or Aulus Cornelius Celsus), considered one of the greatest Roman medical writers, and the author of the first systematic treatise on medicine, is believed not to have been a doctor. And though he was writing almost 2000 years ago, much of what he recorded is still pertinent today.

His only surviving work, De Medicina (also De Re Medicina), is part of a larger encyclopedia set also dealing with agriculture, military art, rhetoric, philosophy, and law. De medicina includes a preamble and eight books. The preamble gives an overview of the history of medical science (i.e., Greek and Alexandrian medicine), while the rest of the books can be divided into three general areas: treatment through proper diet; treatment by pharmaceutical means; treatment through surgery. The text includes information on hygiene, on diet and exercise, on how disease can be modified by season, climate, and age, and on diagnosis and prognosis. It also includes recipes for medications and descriptions of some surgical procedures, including tonsillectomies (Book 7), removal of arrows (Book 7), and trepanation, or the removal of bits of skull (Book 8). In addition to general hygiene, Celsus recommended the washing of wounds with antiseptic substances, such as vinegar and thyme oil. And Celsus's four classical signs of inflammation – calor, dolor, rubor, and tumor (heat, pain, redness, and swelling) – if not their Latin terms, are still the standard today.

And Celsus also had an opinion on what makes a good surgeon, as stated in Book 7: "Now a surgeon should be youthful or at any rate nearer youth than age; with a strong and steady hand which never trembles, and ready to use the left hand as well as the right; with vision sharp and clear, and spirit undaunted; filled with pity, so that he wishes to cure his patient, yet is not moved by his cries, to go too fast, or cut less than is necessary; but he does everything just as if the cries of pain cause him no emotion."

De Medicina is considered the most important historical source for present-day knowledge of Alexandrian and Roman medicine. And for lovers of Latin, according to M. Therese Southgate, MD, writing in the September 8, 1999 issue of Journal of the American Medical Association, the book was "written in Latin so elegant that Celsus is often called Cicero medicorum [the Cicero of Medicine]."

The full text of De Medicina – in English and Latin – can be found online.

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