Celsus prescribes antiseptics with unmistakable purpose. For wounds he has a list of 34 plasters and ointments, all but five of which contain heavy doses of leads and copper salts and those five, according to Celsus, are especially meant to produce pus. Alum, mercury and antimony sulfides are also used, the main excipients are resins, pitch, bitumen, wax, oil and vinegar and the doses of antiseptic salts are generous indeed.

Such a doctor would possess a set of surgical instruments quite as good as any available in a later age right up to at the least, the French Revolution. They could dull the pain for operations or induce sleep by the juice of mandragora or atropin and could even operate successfully for cataract by distending the eye-pupil by anagallis. Specialists could operate for hernias, take out gall stones and deal with very dangerous fractures.

With this, we reach the height of antiseptic treatment in antiquity, though not without danger because antiseptics like mercury and lead salts are also anti people and Celsus realized this. He gives an antidote for poisoning with cerussa, lead acetate.

He also refers to an very ancient antiseptic dressing that he recommends for cleansing old sores - honey and lint - an old Egyptian medicine well over a 1000 years old.

Poppy and henbane were recommended for a draught to induce sleep. Centaury (or bitters) was said to have been the treatment given to Chiron when an arrow fell on his foot as he was handling the arms of Hercules......its power to cure wounds is so strong that even pieces of meat, they say, coalesce if they are boiled with it.