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EYELID surgery, ANCIENT medicine, OPERATIVE surgery, MEDICAL innovations, MEDICAL literature, and OPHTHALMOLOGY

An accurate study of ancient medicine reveals that our forebears developed a large number of surgical ideas and techniques considered to be quite modern. Although the contribution of Aulus Cornelius Celsus to the development of several branches of surgery has already been celebrated, scant attention has been focused on his description of eyelid surgery in the seventh book of his encyclopedia, De Medicina octo libri. Although the practice was quite advanced by that time, the first century A.D., Celsus was the first among the Greco-Roman authors to deal systematically with ophthalmology and oculoplastic surgery. He was a compiler, and many of his 'innovations' were in fact done in principle by others. Yet it is almost certain that the surgical procedures presented were introduced more than 15 centuries before the time of Celsus by Egyptians, Indian surgeons, and Greek and Alexandrian doctors. The burning of the Ancient Library of Alexandria as well as the perishing of many writings of pioneer physicians resulted in a tragic loss of ancient knowledge for posterity. Celsus, whose work has been preserved in our time, helped to publicize this ancient knowledge, and perhaps because of the loss of so much early medical literature, became one of the most influential experts on ancient medicine. An analysis of how previous authors have influenced Celsus' description of eyelid surgery and reflections on how modern his ideas (or those of his time) were are presented in the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

CHRISTIANITY and RELIGIOUS disputations

The appearance in Celsus' work, The True Word, of a Jew who speaks out against Jesus and his followers, has elicited much discussion, not least concerning the genuineness of this character. Celsus' decision to exploit Jewish opinion about Jesus for polemical purposes is a novum in extant pagan literature about Christianity (as is The True Word itself), and that and other observations can be used to support the authenticity of Celsus' Jew. Interestingly, the ad hominem nature of his attack upon Jesus is not directly reflected in the Christian adversus Judaeos literature, which concerns itself mainly with scripture (in this respect exclusively with what Christians called the Old Testament), a subject only superficially touched upon by Celsus' Jew, who is concerned mainly to attack aspects of Jesus' life. Why might this be the case? Various theories are discussed, and a plea made to remember the importance of what might be termed counter-narrative arguments (as opposed to arguments from scripture), and by extension the importance of Celsus' Jew, in any consideration of the history of ancient Jewish-Christian disputation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]