party maintains the same view, but makes this distinction, viz.: that the fruit of conception is not to be destroyed at will because of adultery or of care for beauty, but is to be destroyed to avert danger impending at parturition, if the uterus be small and cannot subserve the perfecting of the fruit, or have hard swellings and cracks at its mouth, or if some similar condition prevail. This party says the same thing about preventing conception, and with it I agree.
(Translated from the Greek by the late John G. Curtis, M.D., of New York.)
Soranus was not only a great obstetrician,—admitted
by all the authorities to have been the greatest in ancient
times,—he was also in high repute for the work which he
did in other departments of medicine—in gynaecology,
for example, in the instruction of midwives, in the management
of children's diseases, in the diagnosis and treatment
of both acute and chronic diseases, in surgery, etc. While
in general he adhered to the fundamental teachings of
the Methodists, he did not hesitate to depart from the
beaten pathway of that sect in his explanations of certain
pathological conditions; for he was more of a clinical
observer than a sectarian, and it was probably his independent
manner of thinking that gave the sect new vigor
and thus enabled it to live on through such a long period
of time. Galen, who was not at all disposed to speak
favorably of the Methodists, says that he tried a number
of the remedies recommended by Soranus and found them
good.
Caelius Aurelianus probably flourished during the third century A. D. The different authorities, however, do not agree as to the limits of the period during which he lived; some saying that his career antedated that of Galen, while others claim that he came upon the scene after the death of the latter, which occurred early in the third century A. D. His chief merit appears to have been that, through his translation of the writings of Soranus into Latin, he placed within reach of the physicians of Rome the teachings of that admirable diagnostician and therapeutist; for it must be remembered that the great majority of the Roman
