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MEDICAL TEACHING IN ROME. 117
arouses just admiration* Even the symptoms of incarcerated
hernia were described by some observers.f
HELIODORUS divided strictures of the urethra with a
cutting instrument and then placed bougies made of dried
paper, and metal sounds in the urethral It was also
known how to operate in a skilful way in cases of phimosis
^ and paraphimosis, condylomata and haemorrhoids. §
Ophthalmology was also able to show remarkable results.
.Not only trichiasis, hypopyon, leucoma, lachrymal fistula
and other affections of the external parts of the eye were
subjected to operative treatment, but even cataract itself.
To be sure surgeons were ignorant of the essential nature
of this disease, but they cured it. Here, as so often in
medicine, Art preceded Science. Operation in cataract
was effected by couching the diseased lens. If the lens
rose up again or showed a soft consistence they then in
addition proceeded to subject it to discission.|| Perhaps
extraction was also known. Certainly the remark of
PLINY that the doctors from greediness preferred pushing
away, to extracting, the scale in the eye, is too deficient
in clearness, for us to refer it to that operation. The
statement of GALEN that some surgeons instead of displacing
the lens have made the attempt to clear it away
externally,! rather justifies the assumption that the extraction
operation was practised.** A description of it is no
* ORIBASIUS iv, 484.-ED. ALBERT: Die Herniologie der Alten, Wien 1878
S. 144.
t CELSUS vii, 18, 2O.-ARET.EUS : de acut. ii, 6—PAULUS #0IN. iii, 4,_
AETIUS. xiv, 24.
X ORIBASIUS iv, 472.
§ ORIBASIUS iv, 466, 470.—PAULUS MG. vi, 79.
|| CELSUS vii, 7._GALEN x, IO^.-VEGETIUS RENATUS: Mulomediciua ii,
i7;-PAULus^GiN:vi,2..-A. ANAGNOSTAKIS: Contributions a l'histoirede la
chirurgie oculaire chez les anciens, Athenes 1872.
f PLINIUS: Hist. Nat. xxix, 8.-GALEN X, 987—Cf. hereon v. HASNER :
Phakolog. Studien, Prague 1868.
** H. MAGNUS (Geschichte des grauen Staares, Leipzig 1877, S. 226 et seq)
defends, on grounds not to be gainsaid, the view that it is here not a question
of cataract extraction but of puncture for hypopyon. In any case as ALFR V