“The bone having been replaced, if the accident should have given rise to pains in the eyes and neck, it will be well to draw blood from the arm. After the luxation has been reduced, the patient must be nourished for some time on liquid food, and abstain, as much as possible, from speaking.”
Caius Plinius Secundus. After Celsus, a very celebrated writer on medicine and natural science was Caius Plinius Secundus. He was born at Como in the year 23 of the Christian era, and flourished from the days of Nero to those of Vespasian. Endowed with a liberal education, he gave himself up to public life, filling many important posts, among which, that of Governor of Spain under Nero and his successors. In the year 79 after Christ, while he was in command of the Roman fleet at Misenum, the tremendous eruption of Vesuvius took place, by which Pompeii, Herculaneum, and other neighboring cities were destroyed. Pliny, driven by the desire to study that marvellous and awful natural phenomenon, betook himself to Stabia, but was there suffocated by the ashes and smoke erupted by Vesuvius.
In spite of the many places occupied by him, Pliny found time to write many works, and among these the thirty-seven books on Natural History, which have given him eternal fame.
It is not at all to be wondered at that this immense work contains a great number of fables, superstitions, and errors of every kind. To sift the true from the false was not an easy thing, at a time when there was almost no idea as to how natural phenomena were produced, and when all scientific criticism was impossible, for the very simple reason that true science did not exist.
To give an idea of the great absurdities which were believed in at that epoch, and which were considered possible even by higher intellects such as Pliny’s, the following passages will suffice: “In many mountains of India, according to what Ctesia writes, there are men with dogs’ heads, who clothe themselves with the skins of wild beasts and bark instead of speaking. There are also a kind of men having only one leg, and who have great speed in leaping. Others are without any neck and have their eyes between their shoulders. Megasthenes writes that among the nomad Indians are men who instead of a nose have only holes, and have their legs bent like serpents. At the extreme confines of India, toward the East, are men without any mouth and with their bodies entirely covered with hair, who live on nothing but air and odors, which they inhale through the nose.”[127]
In Pliny’s day the most prodigious virtues were attributed to herbs; in regard to this the following example is sufficient:
“The herb near which dogs may have made water, when gathered, but without being touched by iron, cures luxations very promptly.”[128]
It must not be thought that Pliny accepted such beliefs without reserve. He notes them, because preceding authors had accepted them, and because if certain things appear to us evidently absurd, their absurdity could not be equally evident at a period when little more than nothing was known in regard to physical and physiological laws, and when the impossibility of rationally explaining natural effects led men to admit the existence of marvellous virtues and influences in every being and in all bodies. On the other hand, Pliny expressly says, for his own justification, in Chapter I of Book VII: “I do not want to bind my faith in many things which I am about to say; but rather refer the readers to the authors from whom I have taken them.”
As is to be expected, we find in Pliny’s works, in regard to teeth, a strange mixture of truth and errors.
In Chapter XV of Book VII, after having said that some children are born with teeth, and after having cited, as examples, Manius Curius, who was therefore called Dentatus, and Gnæus Papirius Carbo, both illustrious men, he adds: