Medieval medicine / by James J. Walsh.

  • James Joseph Walsh
Date:
1920
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Medieval medicine / by James J. Walsh. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    46/260 page 28
    Aetius declares quite positively that all the tumours of the neck region, with the exception of scirrhus, are easily cured, yielding either to surgery or to remedies. The exception is noteworthy. He evidently saw a good many of the functional disturbances and the enlargements of the thyroid gland, which are often so variable in character as apparently to be quite amenable to treatment, and which have actually been cured ” in the history of medicine by all sorts of things from the touch of the hangman’s rope to the wrapping of the shed skin of the snake around the neck. A few cervical tumours were beyond resource. Aetius suggests the connection between hypertrophy of the clitoris and certain exaggerated manifestations of the sexual instinct, as well as the development of vicious sexual habits. It requires only a little study of this early medieval author to understand why Cornelius, at the time of the Renaissance, was ready to declare : 44 Believe me, that whoever is deeply desirous of studying things medical, if he would have the whole of Galen abbreviated and the whole of Orbiasius extended, and the .whole of Paulus (of Angina) amplified; if he would have all the special remedies of the old physicians, as well in pharmacy as in surgery, boiled down to a summa for all affections, he will find it in Aetius.”
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