10 We must also take into consideration whether fevers exist alone, or whether there are additional troubles, namely whether the head aches, whether the tongue is roughened, whether the chest is tight. If there is headache, rose oil should be mixed with vinegar and poured over the head; next two strips of linen are taken, each corresponding in length and breadth to the forehead, of which in turn one is placed in the rose oil and vinegar, the other on the forehead; or unscoured wool is soaked in the same and applied. If the vinegar hurts, the rose oil alone is to be used; if rose oil itself irritates, then bitter olive oil. If there is little relief from the above, we may pound up either dried orris root, or bitter almonds, or some other from among refrigerant[p. 273] herbs; any one of these applied with vinegar lessens pain, one more in one case, another in another. There is benefit from the application of bread soaked in poppy head decoction, or in rose oil containing cerussa or litharge. Also it is not unsuitable to snuff up thyme or dill. But first there is inflammation and pain in the chest, the first thing is to apply to it repressing plasters, lest more diseased matter should gather there, if hotter ones were applied; next, when the primary inflammation has subsided, and not before, we must go on to hot and moist plasters, in order to disperse what remains of the matter. Now the signs of an inflammation are four: redness and swelling with heat and pain. Over this Erasistratus greatly erred, when he said that no fever occurred apart from inflammation. Therefore if there is pain without inflammation, nothing is to be put on: for the actual fever at once will dissolve the pain. But if there is neither inflammation nor fever, but just pain in the chest, it is allowable to use hot and dry foments from the first. Again if the tongue is dry and scabrous, it is to be wiped over first with a pledget of wool dipped in hot water, then to be smeared with a mixture of rose oil and honey. Honey cleans, rose oil represses and at the same time does not allow the tongue to dry. But if the tongue is not scabrous, only dry, after being wiped over with the pledget of wool, it should be smeared with rose oil to which a little wax has been added.
De Medicina. Celsus. W. G. Spencer. Cambridge, Massachusetts. Harvard University Press. 1971 (Republication of the 1935 edition).
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