(Cneius), a famous poet of Campania, was bred a soldier; but quitted the profession of arms, in order to apply himself to poetry, which he prosecuted with great diligence. He composed a history in verse, and a great number of comedies; but it is said, that his first performance of this kind to displeased Metellus on account of the satyrical strokes it contained, that he procured his being banished from the city; on which he retired to Utica in Africa, where he at length died, 202 B.C. We have only some fragments left of his works.
There was another Naevius a famous augur in the reign of Tarquin, who, to convince the king and the Romans of his supernatural power, cut a flint with a razor, and turned the ridicule of the populace to admiration. Tarquin rewarded his merit by erecting him a statue in the comitium, which was still in being in the age of Augustus. The razor and flint were buried near it under an altar, and it was usual among the Romans to make witnesses in civil causes swear near it. This miraculous event of cutting a flint with a razor, though believed by some writers, is treated as fabulous and improbable by Cicero, who himself had been an augur.
a mole on the skin, generally called a mother's mark; also the tumour known by the name of a wen.
All preternatural tumours on the skin, in the form of a wart or tubercle, are called excrescences; by the Greeks they are called acrothymia; and when they are born with a person, they are called navi materni, or marks from the mother. A large tumour depending from the skin is denominated sarcoma. These appear on any part of the body: some of them differ not in their colour from the rest of the skin; whilst others are red, black, &c. Their shapes are various; some resembling strawberries, others grapes, &c. Heifer advises their removal by means of a ligature, a cautery, or a knife, as circumstances best suit.
As to the tumour called a wen, its different species are distinguished by their contents. They are encysted tumours; the matter contained in the first three following is inflamed lymph, and that in the fourth is only fat. Monk Littre was the first who particularly described the fourth kind; and to the following purpose he speaks of them all. A wen is said to be of three sorts, according to the kind of matter it contains: those whose contents resemble boiled rice, or curds, or a bread-poultice, is called atheroma; if it resembles honey, it is named melicera; and if it is like fat, it is denominated fleatoma: but there is a fourth sort, which may be called lipome, because of its fat contents resembling grease. He says that he has seen one on the shoulders of a man, which was a thin bag, of a tender texture, full of a soft fat, and that it had all the qualities of common grease. And though the fat in the lipome resembles that in the fleatoma, yet they cannot be the same: for the matter of the fleatoma is not inflammable, nor does it melt; or if it does, it is with great difficulty and imperfectly; whereas it is the contrary with the lipome. When the man who had the above-named lipome was fatigued, or had drank freely of strong liquors, his lipome was inflamed for some days after, and its contents rarefying increased the size of the tumour.
The lipome seems to be no other than an enlargement of one or more of the cells of the adipose membrane, which is filled only with its natural contents. Its softness and largeness distinguish it in general from the other species, though sometimes the fatty contents will be so hard as to deceive. As this kind of wen does not run between the muscles, nor is possessed of any considerable blood-vessels, it may always be cut off with ease and safety.
As to the other kind of wens, their extirpation may or may not be attempted, according as their situation is with respect to adjacent vessels, the wounding of which would endanger the patient's life.