Posts tagged roman

Top: Female and male bearBottom: Female and male wolf The physician Sextus Placitus wrote an extensive materia medica during the last days of the Roman Empire. His materia medica was largely composed of the supposed uses of various animals in treating illnesses, and has some of the most colorful “treatments” out there. For example, he recommends boiling and consuming a small puppy to relieve colic. Yeah. He was one of those sorts of “physicians”. Liber medicinae ex animalibus. Original text by Sextus Placitus ca. 390 CE, transcribed and illustrated ca. 1400 CE.

Top: Female and male bear
Bottom: Female and male wolf

The physician Sextus Placitus wrote an extensive materia medica during the last days of the Roman Empire. His materia medica was largely composed of the supposed uses of various animals in treating illnesses, and has some of the most colorful “treatments” out there. For example, he recommends boiling and consuming a small puppy to relieve colic.

Yeah. He was one of those sorts of “physicians”.

Liber medicinae ex animalibus. Original text by Sextus Placitus ca. 390 CE, transcribed and illustrated ca. 1400 CE.

Pompeii had preserved Roman medical tools. Some of them were nearly the same as what were used over 1800 years later.

Left: Reproductions of Pompeii surgical instruments at National Museum of Medicine

Right: Cours d’Operations de Chirurgie. M. Dionis, 1757.