Scribonius Largus
Scribonius Largus was the court physician to the Roman emperor Claudius.
About 47 AD, at the request of Gaius Julius Callistus, the emperor's freedman, he drew up a list of 271 prescriptions (Compositiones), most of them his own, although he acknowledged his indebtedness to his tutors, to friends and to the writings of eminent physicians. Certain traditional remedies are also included. The work has no pretensions to style, and contains many colloquialisms. The greater part of it was transferred without acknowledgment to the work of Marcellus Empiricus (c. 410), De Medicamentis Empiricis, Physicis, et Rationabilibus, which is of great value for the correction of the text of Largus.
See the edition of the Compositiones by S. Sconocchia (Teubner 1983), which replaced the well-outdated edition[1] of G. Helmreich (Teubner 1887).
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press
Works
- De compositione medicamentorum liber . Cratandrus, Basileae 1529 Digital edition by the University and State Library Düsseldorf
References
- James Grout: Scribonius Largus, part of the Encyclopædia Romana