Aretæus

, was a physician of Cappadocia, but in what time he flourished authors are not agreed; some placing him under Augustus Caesar, others under Trajan or Adrian. Saxius places him about the year 94. However his works are very valuable. The best editions were published by Dr. Wigan and Dr. Boerhaave. Dr. Wigan’s was elegantly and correctly printed in folio, at Oxford, 1723: in his preface he gives an account of all the preceding editions. To this are subjoined, dissertations on the age of Aretaeus, his sect, his skill in anatomy, and his method of cure. At the end is a large collection of various readings with notes on them; a treatise on the author’s Ionic dialect, and a Greek index by the learned Maittaire, who in 1726 published in 4to Peter Petit’s Commentary upon the first three books of Aretaeus, which had been discovered among the papers of Grsevius. Boerhaave’s edition was published at Leyden, 1731, and another by Haller in 1771, which some think inferior to Boerhaave’s. In 1786, Dr. Moffat published “Aretoeus, consisting of eight books, on the causes, symptoms, and cure of acute and chronic diseases; translated from the original Greek,” 8vo, London. Aretseus is an author yet much admired by every physician who has attentively read his writings. His style is equally remarkable for conciseness and perspicuity, and he particularly excels in describing symptoms, and in the therapeutic part has rarely been equalled. There is nothing known of his personal history. ²