Aulus Cornelius Celsus (c. 25 BCE–c. 50 CE)
A near contemporary of Strabo, Celsus was a Roman writer on medicine and was probably himself a physician; however, details of his life are scant. He hails from the time of the early Roman Empire, though his exact dates are uncertain.
His famous surviving treatise on medicine, De Medicina, is a single volume of an originally much larger work, with eight constituent books. In the later chapters in Book II, he has much to say about food, e.g. those that are hurtful to the stomach, those that heat and cool (‘Heat is excited by pepper, salt … garlick, onion, dry figs, salt fish, wine which is the more heating, the stronger it is’), soporifics, diuretics (‘The urine is promoted by whatever grows in the garden of a good smell, as smallage, rue, dill, basil, mint, hyssop, anise, coriander, cresses, rocket, fennel’), etc.27 Book III deals with various remedies for fevers and other ailments and includes many herbal remedies, mainly using locally available medicines, i.e. from within the Mediterranean area. Book IV deals with treatments of illnesses of different parts of the body, again using many herbal remedies. Books V and VI are devoted to pharmacology and contain a vast array of medicines, including many exotics from the Far East – cardamom, nard, costus, cinnamon, cassia, bdellium, sesame, black pepper, long pepper, white pepper, amomum, malabathrum, sweet flag, ginger – as well as the Arabian peninsula and Horn of Africa – frankincense, myrrh, aloe, gum arabic, tragacanth, balsam, opopanax and sandarac. The number and variety of more local herbs and spices is even greater. Poppy tears, i.e. opium, are commonly part of the treatment, a useful drug in an era devoid of painkillers but with much suffering. The overall impression of the works of Celsus is that medicine of the Roman era was more effective and sophisticated than we may care to give credit for, despite a crude level of knowledge of anatomy and physiology compared with today. The huge array of herbal remedies that could be brought to bear was impressive, and in this we can clearly see the early motivation for import and use of exotic spices.More on the topic Aulus Cornelius Celsus (c. 25 BCE–c. 50 CE):
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