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Medicina Plinii

The Medicina Plinii or Medical Pliny is an anonymous Latin compilation of medical remedies dating to the early 4th century AD. The excerptor, saying that he speaks from experience, offers the work as a compact resource for travelers in dealing with hucksters who sell worthless drugs at exorbitant prices or with know-nothings only interested in profit.[1] The material is presented in three books in the conventional order a capite ad calcem (“from head to toe,” in the equivalent English expression), the first dealing with treatments pertaining to the head and throat, the second the torso and lower extremities, and the third systemic ailments, skin diseases, and poisons.

The book contains more than 1,100 pharmacological recipes, the vast majority of them from the Historia naturalis of Pliny the Elder.[2] Other sources include Celsus, Scribonius Largus, and Dioscorides.[3] Most of the recipes contain a limited number of ingredients, and in contrast to more expansive and thorough collections such as the De medicamentis liber of Marcellus Empiricus, precise measurements in drachmae, denarii or other units are specified for only a few formulations.

Perhaps because Pliny's name was attached to it, the book enjoyed great popularity and influence, with many manuscript versions from the Middle Ages.[2] It was often used as a handbook in monastic infirmaries.[4]

The collection is also referred to as Medicina Plinii Secundi or Plinii valeriani, and its authorship is sometimes noted as “Pseudo-Pliny.”[5] It was a major source for the Physica Plinii, a 5th- or 6th-century medical compilation.[6]

  1. ^ Frequenter mihi in peregrinationibus accidit ut aut propter meam aut propter meorum infirmitatem varias fraudes medicorum experiscerer, quibusdam vilissima remedia ingentibus pretiis vendentibus, aliis ea quae curare nesciebant cupiditatis causa suscipientibus, from Plinii secundi iunioris de medicina, prologue 1, p. 4 in the edition of Alf Önnerfors, Corpus Medicorum Latinorum 3 (Berlin 1964); William D. Sharpe, introduction to “Isidore of Seville: The Medical Writings. An English Translation with an Introduction and Commentary,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 54 (1964), p. 13.
  2. ^ a b D.R. Langlow, Medical Latin in the Roman Empire (Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 64.
  3. ^ Alf Önnerfors, preface to Plinii secundi iunioris qui feruntur de medicina libri tres, Corpus Medicorum Latinorum 3 (Berlin 1964), p. xxxi.
  4. ^ Eva Matthews Sanford, “Famous Latin Encyclopedias,” Classical Journal 44 (1949), p. 463.
  5. ^ William D. Sharpe, introduction to “Isidore of Seville: The Medical Writings. An English Translation with an Introduction and Commentary,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 54 (1964), p. 13; D.R. Langlow, Medical Latin in the Roman Empire (Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 64.
  6. ^ J.N. Adams and Marilyn Deegan, "Bald's Leechbook and the Physica Plinii," in Anglo-Saxon England (Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 89.

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