drastic treatment.

Emetics were greatly used in the time of Celsus. Voluptuaries made use
of them to excite an appetite for food, and they used them after eating
heavy meals to prepare the stomach for a second bout of gluttony. Many
gourmands took an emetic daily. Celsus said that emetics should not be
used as a frequent practice if the attainment of old age was desired.

Celsus excelled as a compiler, and had the faculty of selecting the most
admirable contributions to the art of healing from previous medical
writers. His writings also give an account of what was best in the
medical practice of Rome about his own time. He had a great love for
learning, and it is remarkable that he was attracted to the study of
medicine, for he was a patrician, and members of his class considered
study of that kind beneath the dignity of their rank.

In the Augustan age, when literature in Rome reached its highest level,
the literary style of Celsus was fit to be classed with that of the
great writers of his time. He was never quoted as a great authority on
medicine or surgery by later medical writers; and Pliny refers to him as
a literary man, and not as a practising physician. From the fact that
he elaborated no new system, and founded no new medical sect, it is not
strange that he had no disciples.

In later centuries his works were used as a textbook for students, not
only for the information they supplied, but also because of their
excellence as literature.

Parts of the foregoing synopsis of the writings of Celsus are drawn from
the writings of Hermann Baas and of Berdoe.

_Meges of Sidon_ (20 B.C.) was a famous surgeon who practised in Rome
shortly before the time of Celsus. He was regarded by Celsus as the most
skilful surgeon of that period, and his works, of which nothing now
remains, were quoted by Celsus, and also referred to by Pliny. Meges was
a follower of Themison. He is said to have invented instruments used in
cutting for stone, and he wrote on tumours of the breast and dislocation
of the knee. There have been several famous doctors called _Eudemus_.
One of these was an anatomist in the third century before Christ, and a
contemporary, according to Galen, of Herophilus and Erasistratus. He
gave great attention to the anatomy and physiology of the nervous
system. There was, however, another Eudemus, a physician of Rome, who
became entangled in an intrigue with the wife of the son of the Emperor
Tiberius. He aided