and he should be able to use his left hand equally with his right; his
sight should be clear, and his mind calm and courageous, so that he need
not hurry during an operation and cut less than required, as if the
screams of the patient made no impression upon him."

(2) _Anatomy._--Celsus understood fairly well the situation of the
internal organs, and knew well the anatomy of the chest and female
pelvis. His knowledge of the skeleton was particularly complete and
accurate. He describes very fully the bones of the head, including the
perforated plate of the ethmoid bone, the sutures, the teeth, and the
skeletal bones generally. Portal states that Celsus knew of the
semicircular canals. He understood the structure of the joints, and
points out that cartilage is part of their formation.

Celsus wrote: "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."

(3) _Medicine._--His treatment of fevers was excellent, for he
recognized that fever was an effort of Nature to throw off morbid
materials. His recipes are not so complicated, but more sensible and
effective than those of his immediate successors. He understood the use
of enemas and artificial feeding. In cases of insanity he recognized
that improvement followed the use of narcotics in the treatment of the
accompanying insomnia. He recognized also morbid illusions. He
recommended lotions and salves for the treatment of some eye diseases.

Although Celsus practised phlebotomy, he discountenanced very strongly
its excessive use. The physicians in Rome, in his time, carried bleeding
to great extremes. "It is not," wrote Celsus, "a new thing to let blood
from the veins, but it is new that there is scarcely a malady in which
blood is not drawn. Formerly they bled young men, and women who were not
pregnant, but it had not been seen till our days that children, pregnant
women, and old men were bled." The reason for bleeding the strong and
plethoric was to afford outlet to an excessive supply of blood, and the
weak and anaemic were similarly treated to get rid of evil humours, so
that hardly any sick person could escape this