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Original volume: Examination papers for the Degree of Bachelor of Medicine by the University of Oxford (1864–1867). Open the original paper in the scanned volume, PDF page 81.
Original questions are transcribed from the public-domain edition. Credit: Wellcome Collection; original supplied by Royal College of Physicians, London. Source and public-domain rights statement.
Past exam of the medicine course of the University of Oxford 1867 Second examination Classical paper 2026-10-31
Original volume: Examination papers for the Degree of Bachelor of Medicine by the University of Oxford (1864–1867). The paper occupies PDF volume pages 101–102 (Oxford, December 1867, No. VII.). Open the original paper in the scanned volume.
Original questions are transcribed from the public-domain edition. Credit: Wellcome Collection; original supplied by Royal College of Physicians, London. Source and public-domain rights statement.
Translation. The stomach, the internal organ responsible for digestion, performs digestion poorly whenever diarrhoea takes hold of a person; and the diarrhoea consists of liquid, undigested food. Unless this happens from a temporary cause for only one or two days, the whole person becomes weak through wasting of the body, and the coeliac affection of Aretaeus becomes a chronic disease, through weakness of the digestive heat and chilling of the stomach. Then the food is indeed broken down under the action of heat, but the heat does not digest it completely or turn it into an appropriate nutritive fluid: it leaves it half-finished (the printed word is incomplete), through failure of the completing power. The food, abandoned by the process, changes for the worse in colour, smell and consistency. Its colour is white and lacking bile; its smell is foul and dung-like; and it is liquid and without cohesion because the process has failed, retaining only the beginning of digestion as its one good quality. Hence there is gaseous, continual, foul-smelling belching in the stomach.
Text and medical meaning. The scan ends PDF volume p. 101 with λείπε- and begins p. 102 with ἀδρανείῃ. The translation marks this defective word rather than silently pretending that the missing ending is visible. The corresponding edited Greek has λείπει, “leaves”, which supplies the sense used here. The Oxford extract also separates the conditional clause from the following sentence more abruptly than that edition; the translation carries its evident qualification forward. [ref]
On the Causes and Signs of Chronic Diseases by Aretaeus of Cappadocia. II.7, opening paragraph: λείπει ἀδρανείῃ τοῦ τέλεος; the edited text also has ἀλλ᾽ and πρὸς δὲ καὶ linking the conditional construction
Aretaeus of Cappadocia uses κοιλίη for the stomach or digestive belly and σκῆνος, literally a tent or dwelling, for the body. ἀτροφίη indicates wasting or failure of nourishment; it need not denote the modern histological concept of atrophy. “Appropriate nutritive fluid” renders χυμὸν οἰκεῖον: the product that the author thinks suitable for bodily nourishment, rather than a modern chemical identification. The pale, foul, loose output is an observed feature; the explanation by weak digestive heat is the author's theory. It is not a modern account of digestion. [ref]
Examination papers for the Degree of Bachelor of Medicine by the University of Oxford (1864–1867). PDF volume pp. 101–102, Greek extract attributed to Aretaeus, Causes and Signs of Chronic Diseases II.7
The historical coeliac affection of Aretaeus cannot establish a modern diagnosis of coeliac disease. Modern coeliac disease involves an immune response to gluten that damages the small intestine; the ancient symptom description alone cannot identify that mechanism. The diagnosis should therefore not be read back into the passage as certain. [ref]
Celiac Disease by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. Definition and Facts: chronic digestive and immune disorder triggered by gluten, damaging the small intestine
Translation. For rapidly developing, or acute diseases, also resolve of their own accord, sometimes through favourable chance and sometimes through nature's favour. Consequently, ignorant people, carried away by this, often avoid physicians and attribute these favourable outcomes to new incantations and amulets, or to chance; for these rapidly developing diseases are driven out either by a flow of sweat, by blood discharged through the nose, or by a discharge from the intestines. But chronic diseases, or diseases of slow development, which have already gained possession of the body with a kind of prior claim, call for the skill of the physician alone, since they are resolved neither by nature nor by chance.
Interpretation. Caelius Aurelianus contrasts spontaneous resolution in acute disease with the entrenched course of chronic disease. Here passiones means affections or diseases, not emotions; ligamenta means protective bindings or amulets, not anatomical ligaments; proventus means favourable outcomes. The metaphor praejudicio quodam gives the established disease something like a prior claim on the body. The final assertion is the author's defence of professional medicine, not a present-day law that every chronic disease requires effective medical treatment or that none can remit spontaneously. The account of sweating, nosebleeds and intestine discharge describes his historical explanation, not evidence that deliberately producing these discharges cures acute disease. [ref]
Examination papers for the Degree of Bachelor of Medicine by the University of Oxford (1864–1867). PDF volume p. 101, Latin extract attributed to the preface to Caelius Aurelianus's chronic diseases
Original volume: Examination papers for the Degree of Bachelor of Medicine by the University of Oxford (1864–1867). Open the original paper in the scanned volume.
Original questions are transcribed from the public-domain edition. Credit: Wellcome Collection; original supplied by Royal College of Physicians, London. Source and public-domain rights statement.
Original volume: Examination papers for the Degree of Bachelor of Medicine by the University of Oxford (1864–1867), scanned PDF page 95. Open the original paper in the scanned volume.
Original questions are transcribed from the public-domain edition. Credit: Wellcome Collection; original supplied by Royal College of Physicians, London. Source and public-domain rights statement.
Past exam of the medicine course of the University of Oxford 1867 Second examination Materia medica 2026-10-31
Original volume: Examination papers for the Degree of Bachelor of Medicine by the University of Oxford (1864–1867). Open the original paper in the scanned volume, PDF page 89.
Original questions are transcribed from the public-domain edition. Credit: Wellcome Collection; original supplied by Royal College of Physicians, London. Source and public-domain rights statement.
The historical standard used below is the British Pharmacopoeia by the General Medical Council (1867). A contemporary July publication notice records official publication notices dated 14 June 1867, before this December examination. Later reprints containing the additions of 1874 must be distinguished from this original issue.[ref]
British Pharmacopoeia publication notice (1867). July 1867, p. 99; notice of publication in the three Gazettes on 14 June
These are explanations of historical materia medica, with present physiology identified separately where it changes the interpretation. Past exam of the medicine course of the University of Oxford 1867 Second examination Pathology 2026-10-31
Original volume: Examination papers for the Degree of Bachelor of Medicine by the University of Oxford (1864–1867). Open the original paper in the scanned volume. Source range: PDF pages 91–91.
Original questions are transcribed from the public-domain edition. Credit: Wellcome Collection; original supplied by Royal College of Physicians, London. Source and public-domain rights statement.
Original volume: Examination papers for the Degree of Bachelor of Medicine by the University of Oxford (1864–1867). Original scanned volume, PDF page 99. Oxford, December 1867.
Original questions are transcribed from the public-domain edition. Credit: Wellcome Collection; original supplied by Royal College of Physicians, London. Source and public-domain rights statement.
The answers distinguish the terminology and therapeutic possibilities of 1867 from present medicine. They explain general anatomy, physiology and clinical reasoning; no individual patient or examination findings are assumed.
Past exam of the medicine course of the University of Oxford 1867 Second examination Therapeutics 2026-10-31
Original volume: Examination papers for the Degree of Bachelor of Medicine by the University of Oxford (1864–1867). Open the original paper in the scanned volume, PDF pages 93–93.
Original questions are transcribed from the public-domain edition. Credit: Wellcome Collection; original supplied by Royal College of Physicians, London. Source and public-domain rights statement.
The historical discussions reconstruct defensible reasoning available in December 1867; they are not an official answer key. Each is followed by a present-day correction where the underlying theory or treatment has changed. Clinical descriptions below are hypothetical teaching patterns, not records of actual patients. Historical quantities describe historical practice and are not current prescriptions.