De Medicina
De Medicina
Existing Greek medical knowledge, from dietetics through surgery, can and should be organized into a clear, systematic Latin reference, and a well-read layman can produce that reference competently.
- Greek medical knowledge systematized into Latin for the first time
- detailed surgical description, including cataract removal
- likely written by a learned compiler rather than a practicing doctor
- first medical text ever printed in Europe, 1478
The only surviving section of a much larger encyclopedia covering agriculture, rhetoric, law, and philosophy alongside medicine, Celsus's eight books on medicine synthesize earlier Greek medical writing, chiefly Hippocratic and Alexandrian, into an organized Latin reference covering diet, drug therapy, and surgery, including detailed and historically significant descriptions of procedures such as cataract removal and the treatment of bladder stones. Celsus was very likely not a practicing physician himself but an educated Roman compiler writing for other educated Romans, and the work's clarity and elegant Latin prose, rare among ancient authors for combining both, made it, once rediscovered and printed in 1478, the first medical text printed in Europe.
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