"CELSUS REDIVIVUS."

904 of provincial schools, have also expressed themens medica.’ Here we are reminded of the subtheir intention to join the party. It is expected stantial contributions made to therapeutic resource by that altogether our visitors from France will number theRoman Hippocrates,’ who, according to Morgagni, from 130 to 150 and we are certain that the English was the first to recommendclisteri enutrienti’ and whose medical profession, especially those resident in London, suggestions for the relief of ascites have in Germany by will exert themselves to the utinost to render this visit Brunninghausen and in Italy by Pietro Betti been practised useful, pleasurable, and successful in every way. Our with the success that rewarded their originator. Here we guests will be entertained at dinner on Oct. 12th’at the find the history of ’anaplastic surgery,’ how Celsus, who Hotel Cecil and we have no doubt that a large number of first makes mention of it, inspired the Sicilian operators, English medical men will desire to be present to welcome and Branca, father and son, to revive it at the close of the to honour them. Any further information can be obtained fifteenth century till subsequent practice brought it to from Dr. Dawson Williams, 2, Agar-street, Strand, W.C., perfection through the Calabrian Vianeo to the great or Dr. W. Jobson Horne, 27, New Cavendish-street, W., the Bolognese surgeon, Tagliacozzi, called by his pupil Giamsecretaries of the English Executive Committee. batista Cortesi,il legislatore ed il perfezionatore dell’ arte plastica chirurgica.’ And so through numerous resuscitations of ’wisdom old but new,’ Del Lungo conducts us to the "CELSUS REDIVIVUS." 2exata of whether Celsus was a practitioner or ONE of our Italian correspondents writes : " Ciceronian q1laestio consultant by profession, or merely the patrician amateur in style, Hippocratean in method, the master work of Celsus who acquired and practised the healing art much as the once more appeals to his compatriots in the carefully conelder Cato did, in tending the slaves or personnel attached stituted text and faithful rendering of Dr. Angiolo Del to his estate. Del Lungo’s verdict is unreservedly for the Lungo. Hitherto the ’Roman Hippocrates’ has fared but former hypothesis, that Celsus was really a professional man, indifferently at the hands of Italian translators. The Abbe an illustrious member of the calling which the great Caesar Francesco Ranieri Chiari of Pisa, whose version saw the was the first to admit to the rights of Roman citizenship. light at Venice in 1747, had slender qualifications for the But enough has been said to draw the reader’s attention to work and seems, indeed, to have set himself the task of what has been justly called ’the event of the year in Italian furnishing posterity with an object lesson in eighteenth medico-historian literature’-an event which owes its century scholarship and style, the former characteristically significance not only to the transcendent merits of the loose, the latter characteristically affected. 90 years elapsed classic as introduced, edited, and translated, but also to the before another attempt in the same field was undertaken, this filial care with which the posthumous work has been made time with superior equipment in learning and literature, its accessible to the public by Signor Isidoro Del Lungo, author being Giuseppe Del Chiappa, a Tuscan by birth, and, himself an ornament of Italian literature, as witness (inter like Chiari, an ecclesiastic by profession. Having qualified alia) his great edition of the mediaeval Latin poet Pontanlls." in medicine at the University of Pavia, in which he rose to be clinical lecturer, Del Chiappa acquitted himself of his HOSPITAL ABUSE. task with some credit though leaving not a little to be THE question of hospital abuse has once again been desired in ease and elegance. His translation held the field for a quarter of a century till it was superseded by that of brought prominently to the fore in the lay press. This is Salvatore di Renzi of Naples, whose monumental edition of largely due to a correspondence which has recently taken Celsus is only less honourable to Italian medicine than his place between the house committee of the London Hospital work on theScuola Salernitana,’ a mine of information on and the East-end Medical Association. The association one of the most interesting episodes in medical history. maintained that the hospital authorities were treating Northern and Southern Italy having each tried its hand on as in- and out-patients individuals who had no just reproducing the Roman classic it remained for Central claim to take advantage of a charitable institution. Italy to bear away the palm in all the requisites The house committee expressed entire sympathy with of such an undertaking, and now we have in Del Lungo’s the local practitioners and while realising that the matter text and translation as near an approach to the form was a difficult one to deal with drew up certain regulations and the charm of the original as life-long study and con- with the view of checking any abuse. The principal clauses genial gifts could make it. A Tuscan practitioner of many set forth in these proposed regulations are to the effect years’ standing whose recreation after a laborious season was that the addresses of all patients will be taken and the medical literature from Hippocrates downwards, Del Lungo books will be open to the inspection of any local pracThe local practitioners will also be invited left no resource untried for the elucidation and reproduction titioner. of his favourite author, the only part of his work which he to visit the out-patient department and if they rewas unable to perform being the revising of it in proof. This cognise any patient known as being unsuitable for has been executed with adequate skill and pious care by his hospital treatment they will be able to communicate with the secretary. It is also announced that the son Isidoro Del Lungo, who has had the competent aid of Professor Pietro Stromboli in a line-by-line comparison of committee is in communication with the Charity Organisathe translation with the text and of Professor Enrico tion Society; it is hoped that this society will be able Rostagno of the Laurentian Library in a fresh collation of to advise the hospital as to the best means for inquiring the Celsian manuscripts contained in that literary treasure- about patients, while the hospital is willing to pay .S100 house. The result is before us in a compact and clearly per annum to the society for an almoner to be stationed printed octavo from the publishing firm of G. C. Sansoni of in the receiving rooms. Finally, it is stated that the Florence, and its portability seems specially designed to secretary has made arrangements to visit every patient render it-what it was to the translator-a companion admitted to the hospital on the day after arrival and equally pleasant and profitable on a professional man’s if it is found that the patient is not of the class for holiday. A preliminary essay onCelsus and Roman which the institution is intended he or she is to be Medicine’ forms an illuminating introduction to the discharged and asked to give a donation for the time

representatives

treatise itself, and from the finely moulded periods in the choicest Italian the reader is prepared for his encounter with an author possessed, si quis alius, of what the late Professr William Stokes of Dublin used to require in every votary of the healing art-

during which the patient remains in the hospital. The question of hospital abuse bristles with difficulties. Without expressing any definite opinion as to whether or not the proposals made by the house committee of the London Hospital are likely to aid in the solution of the