Caelius Aurelianus, Roman Doctor, physician, writer

Background

Nothing is known about his birth.

Career

Little is known about his career.

He probably flourished in the 5th century, although some place him two or even three centuries earlier.

In favour of the later date is the nature of his Latin, which shows a strong tendency to the Romance, and the similarity of his language to that of Cassius Felix, also an African medical writer, who about 450 wrote a short treatise, chiefly based on Galen.

There is a translation by Aurelianus of two works of Soranus of Ephesus (2nd century), the chief representative of the methodic school of medicine, on chronic and acute maladies—Tardae or Chronicae Passiones, in five, and Celeres or Acutae Passiones in three books. The translation, which is especially valuable since the original has been lost, shows that Soranus possessed considerable practical skill in the diagnosis of both ordinary and exceptional diseases. It is also important in that it contains numerous references to the methods of earlier medical authorities.

There also are considerable fragments of his Medicinales Responsiones, also adapted from Soranus, a general treatise on medicine in the form of questions and answers; it deals with rules of health (salutaria praecepta) and the pathology of internal diseases (ed. Rose, Anecdota Graeca et Latina, ii. , 1870). Where it is possible to compare Aurelianus's translation with the original—as in a fragment of his Gynaecia with Soranus's Περὶ γ�

ναικείων παθῶν—it is found that it is literal, but abridged. There is apparently no manuscript of the treatises in existence.

In his texts, Aurelianus writes about the 2nd century Greek physician Apollonius Glaucus, author of several works on internal diseases. Aurelianus quotes a passage on the subject of lumbrici.

Achievements

Caelius Aurelianus was the last of the medical writers of the Western Roman Empire, usually considered the greatest Greco-Roman physician after Galen. Caelius probably practiced and taught in Rome and is now thought to rank second only to the physician Celsus as a Latin medical writer. His most famous work, De morbis acutis et chronicis (“Concerning Acute and Chronic Diseases”), is a thorough exposition of classical medical knowledge.