The first four books also direct the method of employing gestation, friction, baths, fomentations, and the sudorific treatment. As to dist, patients are to abstain from eatiog and drinking at the begiuuing of their maladies, but they must afterwards take food in moderate quantities.
Among the numerous remedies contained in the fifth and sixth books, but few are to be taken Internally; by far the greater number are unguents, plasters, cataplasme, &o. Among the exceptions are three antidotes ; the drot. is a compound of opium (Lacrynue 'mimeo-is) and aromatics; the second, called ambrosia, and said to have been composed for one of the Ptolemies by Zopyrns, consists of aromatics without opium ; the third, again, contains opium, and is the fnmons 3Lthridate, by which Mithrdatoe is said to have secured himself against poison.
The seventh and eighth books give a very favourable idea of the progress which surgery had made in the Augustan age. The opera tion of lithotomy, as described by Coleus, has been much praised and very extensively adopted. Mr. Samuel Cooper observes that it was longer practised than all the other methods, "having been continued to the commencement of the 16th century; and it was performed at Bourdeaux, Paris, and other places in France, on patients of all ages by Raonx, even so late as 150 years ago. Frets, Jacques occasionally had recourse to it; and it was successfully executed by Heister (part ii., chap. 140). A modern author recommends it always to be
preferred on boys under fourteen." (Allan, p. 12.) (' Surgical Diet.' art, Lithotomy.') Among the moat remarkable points in this division of his work we may mention the account of cataract, and the operation with the needle for its cure (lib. vii., 7); the twofold treatment of goitre by caustic, and extirpation (vii., 13); tapping in dropsy (vii, 15); the restoration of the prepuce in the circumcised (vii., 25); tho employ ment of the catheter (vii, 26); manual delivery in cases where the child is dead (vii., 29); and the treatment of fractures and dislocations in the last book. Nor will the account given by Cams of the struc ture of the human body fail to surprise those who have been told that the ancients were ignorant of anatomy.
The princeps editio of Coleus is that of Nicolaus, Florent., 1478. The best editions are those of Krause, Leipz., 1766; of Terga ; of Vallart, Lutet., 1772; the 8vo. edition printed at Leyden in 1746; the one edited by Dr. Milligan, second edit, Edin., 1831, and that by Ritter and Albus, Colon. ad Rhen., 1835. Celsus has been translated into several modern languages. There is n translation into English, with notes, critical and explanatory, by Dr. Grieve, London 1756, 8vo.
(La Clerc, Histoire de la MIdecine; Dissertatio de rila, pre fixed to Dr. Milligan's edition.)