Home page - digilibLT
Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale - Amedeo Avogadro Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Vercelli Regione Piemonte
  • Home
  • The project
  • News
  • Late antiquity on the web
  • Help
  • Contacts and feedback
  • Reserved area
  • DH Day 2021
English language Italian language
Large font size Default font size Small font size
Search

Find



  • Searchable works
  • Advanced search
  • Search the bibliography

Browse and download
  • Works
  • Authors
  • Bibliography
By date
  • II
  • III
  • IV
  • V
  • VI
  • VII
  • VIII
  • Uncertain date
  • All the authors
By name
    • A
    • B
    • C
    • D
    • E
    • F
    • G
    • H
    • I
    • L
    • M
    • N
    • O
    • P
    • Q
    • R
    • S
    • T
    • U
    • V
  • All the authors
Other resources
  • Modern studies on late antiquity
  • Canon of late-antique authors
  • Fonts and software to download
  • Download texts

Additional proponent

External link to the website of the Università degli studi di Torino

Plinius (Ps.) (Ps. Plinius Secundus Iunior)

saec. IV


The Medicina Plinii was compiled in the 4th century AD, probably in the first half of that century. Marcellus Empiricus mentions the Medicina Plini in his work De medicamentis, which strengthens the argument for a dating to 300-350 AD.

The Medicina Plini collects over 1,100 medical recipes, divided into three books: the first records remedies for pathologies affecting the human body from head to chest, the second lists remedies for pathologies from chest to feet, the third one catalogues remedies for pathologies which either affect the body as a whole, such as fevers and poisonings, or that could target any part of it, such as animal bites.

In the preface, the author states that the collection aims to offer a therapeutic handbook for people who travel, so that they will not be forced to seek the help of doctors who may turn out to be either fraudulent or useless.

The content derives in part from Plinius’ Naturalis historia (esp. books XX to XXXIII), in part from other unidentified medical sources. The compiler put much work into the reorganisation of the content into headings and the distribution of medical recipes according to the localisation of pathologies a capite ad calcem. Most manuscripts attribute this work to Plinius Secundus Iunior. We know nothing about him except what we read in the work itself. [David Paniagua] [Translation of L. Battezzato]

Title list
De medicina (Medicina Plinii)
De physica
De physica excerpta codicis Bamb. Med. 1 ab Önnerfors omissa

Back to list
Bibliography
  1. Önnerfors, A In Medicinam Plinii Studia Philologica
  2. Önnerfors, A. Plinii Secundi Iunioris qui feruntur de medicina libri tres
  3. Önnerfors, A. Die mittelalterlichen Fassungen der Medicina Plinii
  4. Castiglioni, A. Pseudo-Plinian medicine
  5. Doody, A. Authority and authorship in the Medicina Plinii
  6. Ferraces Rodríguez, A. Un extracto de la Medicina Plinii y una fuente ignorada de la Physica Plinii
  7. Hunt, Yvette The Medicina Plinii. Latin Text, Translation, and Commentary
  8. Langslow, D. Medical Latin in the Roman Empire

  • 1
  • 2
  •   »

Creative Commons License This page licensed under Creative Commons Attribution - Non commercial - ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License
Release 2.22 - Made by Step srl