Aretaeus of Cappadocia  Aretaeus () is one of the most celebrated of the ancient Greek physicians, of whose life, however, few particulars are known. He presumably was a native or at least a citizen of Cappadocia, a Roman province in Asia Minor (modern day Turkey), and most likely lived after the first century (possible floruit 130–140 CE). He is generally styled "the Cappadocian" (). Aretaeus wrote in Ionic Greek a general treatise on diseases, which is still extant. The valuable book displays great accuracy in the detail of symptoms, and in seizing the diagnostic character of diseases. In his practice he followed for the most part the method of Hippocrates, but he paid less attention to what have been styled "the natural actions" of the system; and, contrary to the practice of the "Father of Medicine", he did not hesitate to attempt to counteract them, when they appeared to him to be injurious. Aretaeus offered clinical descriptions of a number of diseases among which he gave classic accounts of asthma, epilepsy, pneumonia, tetanus, uterus cancer and different kinds of insanity. He differentiated nervous diseases and mental disorders and described hysteria, headaches, mania and melancholia. He wrote the first known description of Coeliac disease, naming it disease of the abdomen, "koliakos". The account which Aretaeus gives of his treatment of various diseases indicates a simple and sagacious system, and one of more energy than that of the professed Methodici. Thus he freely administered active purgatives; he did not object to narcotics; he was much less averse to bleeding; and upon the whole his "Materia Medica" was both ample and efficient. It may be asserted generally that there are few of the ancient physicians, since the time of Hippocrates, who appear to have been less biased by attachment to any peculiar set of opinions, and whose account of the phenomena and treatment of disease has better stood the test of subsequent experience. Aretaeus is placed by some writers among the Pneumatici because he maintained the doctrines which are peculiar to this sect; other systematic writers, however, think that he is better entitled to be placed with the Eclectics. Aretaeus' work consists of eight books, two "De causis et signis acutorum morborum", two "De causis et signis diuturnorum morborum", two "De curatione acutorum morborum", and two "De curatione diuturnorum morborum".