Ancient Life: A Stitch in Time

As the first-century A.D. Roman encyclopedist Aulus Cornelius Celsus wrote in De Medicina, “A surgeon ought to be young, or, at any rate, not very old; his hand should be firm and steady, and never shake … His eyesight should be acute and clear, his mind intrepid, and so far subject to pity as to make him desirous of the recovery of his patient, but not so far as to suffer himself to be moved by his [patient’s] cries … as if the other’s screams made no impression on him.” Thus the physician Iapyx attempts to remove an arrow […]