Aretaeus of Cappadocia has left us a work on Acute and Chronic Diseases. He has few references to instruments, but such as they are they are interesting, as he names some which are given by no other author. He has a tantalizing allusion to a work by himself on surgery which has not been preserved. There is a fine edition of the text, with an English translation by Adams of Banchory, in the Transactions of the Sydenham Society.
Galen (130-200 A. D.) was a most voluminous writer, much of whose work remains and teems with matter of interest to us. Much information about instruments is to be gained from even his purely anatomical writings. The most accessible edition is that of Kühn (20 vols., Leipzig, 1821), but it is slipshod in the text, and even more so in the translation, which is in Latin.
Oribasius (325 A. D.) wrote an encyclopaedia of medicine, which is called Συναγωγαὶ Ἰατρικαί—Collecta Medicinalia, in seventy books, only about one third of which remain. This is the most interesting of his works from our point of view, but he has left also a synopsis of the encyclopaedia called Σύνοψις, and a sort of first aid manual called Εὐπόριστα. I have used the edition of Daremberg and Bussemaker (1851-76).
Soranus of Ephesus has left us a most valuable treatise on obstetrics and gynaecology, which, though written only for midwives, contains many interesting references to instruments such as the speculum, uterine sound, cephalotribe, decapitator, and embryo hook. He lived in the reign of Trajan. Some of the chapters, of which the Greek is lost, have been preserved to us by his abbreviator Moschion. I have used the edition of Rose published at Leipzig in 1882.
Moschion (fifth century) translated into Latin the gynaecological and obstetrical part of the works of Soranus for the benefit of midwives who could not speak Greek. This version is now lost, but we have a translation of it into Greek, made after the fall of the Western Empire and the development of the Greek-speaking Empire at Constantinople in the sixth century. There is an Edition of this by Gesner (Basle, 1566). Finally, this Greek version of Moschion was translated back into barbarous Latin at some early date, Barbour thinks by some member of the Schola Salernitana. This was published at Venice by Aldus in the sixteenth century, and Rose has prefaced his edition of Soranus with it. This work of Moschion is only of interest to us from the fact that he preserves to us the substance of some chapters of which the original in Soranus is wanting.
Caelius Aurelianus Siccensis, an African of the fourth or fifth century, translated the works of Soranus, both those on gynaecology and those on general diseases, and he preserves some of Soranus which we would not otherwise possess; but he writes in a barbarous Latin which, like the Latin of some other African writers on medical subjects, is calculated to cause great pain to any one not familiar with this particular style.
Aetius lived in the first half of the sixth century, and compiled a voluminous treatise on medicine in sixteen books. He worked entirely with scissors and paste, but the result is the preservation to us of a large number of extracts from writers whose works would otherwise have entirely disappeared, and his work is of great value for the study of instruments. In 1534 an Aldine Edition of the first eight books was published, and, though a translation of the whole work was published by Cornarius in 1533-42 in Latin, six of the last eight books were never published in the original Greek. This is unfortunate for us, as for our purpose the original is the only thing of any great value, Greek being, as I have already pointed out, a language richer in compounds than Latin is, and lending itself better to the coining of special names for special instruments. Not that the sixteenth-century translator is ever at a loss for a turn by which to express himself in Latin, but the turn, as often as not, is by periphrasis just at the very point when we would have liked a very exact equivalent for the Greek. The translation of the part of the work of which we have the Greek shows that we cannot entirely depend on some of these periphrases even where they appear definite, as in some cases an unwarrantable assumption is made about the form of an instrument. Thus λιθουλκῷ is translated ‘forcipe ad id facta’ because in Cornarius’s time the instrument used for extracting stone from the bladder was a forceps, whereas it is doubtful whether there was in the Roman period anything more than a scoop, and, therefore, we are not entitled to translate λιθουλκός by anything more definite than ‘stone extractor’, its etymological equivalent. Although, therefore, I have examined the latter eight books of Aetius in the Latin translation, and although they contain some of the most interesting information to be found in the whole work, I have been very chary about laying stress on any deductions drawn from the Latin translation only. It may be noted that there are two ways of referring to the different books in Aetius, according to whether the Greek text or the translation of Cornarius is meant. Cornarius arranged his version in four tetrabibli of four books each, whereas the Greek text is simply numbered from i-viii. ‘No vii.’ of the Greek text is, therefore, called by Cornarius ‘Tetr. ii. lib. iii.’ The eleventh book was published by Daremberg in his edition of Rufus (1879), and the twelfth book was published by Costomeris at Paris in 1892.
Pliny the Younger. Plinius Secundus (Rose, Leipzig, 1875). The writings of Pliny contain little information of any kind and are absolutely of no use for our purpose.
Scribonius Largus (45 A. D.). The edition I have examined is named ‘Scribonii Largi Compositiones’ and is edited by Helmreich, Leipzig, 1887. The work of Scribonius Largus is entirely pharmaceutical, but he gives many references to appliances by which medicaments were prepared in the surgery.
Marcellus Empiricus (300 A. D.) wrote a work on pharmacy, of large size but little value, and in a poor style. There are a few passages bearing on implements of minor surgery. A good deal is copied from Largus. Aldus published the text by Cornarius at Venice in his collection of Medici Antiqui (1547), republished by Stephanus (Medicae Artis Principes), 1567. The edition I have used is that of Helmreich (Leipzig, 1889).