Note (16) — BOOK VII.

16. And therefore cannot be separated.) In the original Ideoque legi non possunt. Our author here barely mentions the lectio venarum, and a little below speaks of it as a distinct operation in these words, Sed nihil melius est, quam quod in Gallia quoque comata sit, ubi venas in temporibus, et in superiore capitis parte legunt. In the conclusion of the chapter he promises a full explanation of it, when he comes to the varices of the legs. The place he refers to is the 31st chapter of this book, where the reader will find, he does not once use the word lego through the whole: not that he forgot it, for he puts us in mind of this very passage in the beginning: Huc autem et earum venularum, quæ in capite nocent,—curationem distuli; he then proceeds to describe two methods of cure by the actual cautery, and excision. In the first process I find nothing applicable to lego, there as well as here, cauterizing being quite a different thing; but in the second, namely the excision, the veins are separated from the contiguous parts, and are taken up by several blunt hooks, at the distance of four fingers breadth from each other, then, one of these hooks being raised, the vein is cut through and pulled away: so in all the rest (the terms are Excipitur, diducitur, attrahitur, evellitur, rursus abscinditur.) Now from the various senses, which lego bears in the classics, it seems without a strain capable of signifying any step of this operation. And as it is not uncommon among the ancients to include several known consequences under one term, I must own it appears to me our author intends them all, when he uses the word lego in this chapter.