Resumen de Morgagni lecteur de Celse
Since the discovery of a first manuscript in 1426, Celse's 'De Medicina' has enjoyed great success and has been copied many times and in numerous editions. As a result, it has unfortunately suffered serious changes. Framed for his work on Anatomical Pathology, J.B.Morgagni had also written eight letters dedicated to a philological reading of Celse's text edited by Th. van Almeloveen in 1713. The first three letters were dated 1720 and the remaining five 1750. He highlighted 217 passages which he believed to be worthy of comment. After having compared the lessons of these passages with those of earlier manuscripts and editions, he proposed corrections to 180 of them.
Despite the incontestable quality of this work, it remains little known. In France, Iater editions of 'De Medicina' hardly ever quoted Morgagni. There are two possible reasons for this lack of recognition.
Leonard Targa published a corrected 'De Medicina' text in 1769 wich was accepted as the authoritative version until Marx's 1915 revision. It is worth knowing that Targa prepared this edition working closely with Morgagni. On exarnining his texte, one notices that he adopts and comments favourably on most of the proposals made by Morgagni.
When studying Celse, it is advisable to give credit to Morgagni for much of the current text.
The second reason for this lack of recognition comes back to the presentation of the letters. Morgagni's style is difficult to tackle. The translators of 'De sedibus et causis morborum' all experienced great difficulty in grasping his train of thought and expressing it in an understandable way. This comment applies even more to the letters In Celsum which were written without a logical plan or order just as ideas come into this head.
These letters are not strictly speaking a medical text. However, they are the work of a doctor and it is worth considering their merit as works of literature due to their stylistic particularity and their documentary interest.
