Bloody quest ends in rare edition of early medical text

Commentary. By Laura Ann Guelle, AMNews contributor. Jan. 28, 2002.

First-century physicians had been unimpressed with the medical compendium, De medicina, but nearly 2,000 years later, in December 1912, Sir William Osler, MD, was so excited to find a copy of the first printed edition for sale that he sent a London bookseller's catalogue entry to S.Weir Mitchell, MD, with this note that was written in pencil: "This is a superb copy. Why not bleed the Fellows? I shall go $25. W.O."

Within one month, Osler's opening contribution, the equivalent of $450 today, inspired 13 fellows of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, including Dr. Mitchell and W.W. Keen, MD, to submit to the blood-letting and donate the necessary funds to purchase this rare edition of an early medical text.

Compiled by a Roman nonphysician, Aulus Cornelius Celsus, in about A.D. 30, De medicina originally formed part of a general knowledge encyclopedia, entitled Artes, which was written for the educated patrician elite. Sections on agriculture, military art, rhetoric, philosophy and law have all disappeared over the ages, but the medical part somehow survived.

Celsus chronicles the history of medical practice from the mythological inception of medicine to his own time. It remains the best source of medical information about the time period between Hippocrates and the first century. Following the historical review, Celsus presents the whole of medical, pharmacological and surgical knowledge, including sections on dietetics, pathology, therapeutics and bone diseases. [...]