"Abiit… Noster Celsus ad Excelsos". Some Lost Editions of Latin Medical Authors

Abstract

Although the English scholar John Caius recorded in 1570 that his editions of Celsus and Scribonius, with commentaries, were ready for the press, they still remained unpublished at his death three years later. In 1621 a volume of his Castigationes surfaced in Denmark and was taken to Padua by Johan Rode, who planned to use it for his projected editions of Celsus and other medical writers. Rode recorded some of Caius' collations and emendations in his own edition of Largus and in his De acia, but his own work on Celsus and Vegetius was left unfinished at his death. His material was handed over to his friend Thomas Bartholin to revise and publish, only to be destroyed in a fire in Bartholin's country house at Hagested in 1670. This article examines traces of the work of Caius and Rode.