Anonymus Londinensis

It seems to be an unfinished draft (breaking off in mid-column) in the hand of the author, who compiled, digested, and manipulated various sources as he wrote, so that we may even observe the process of his thinking as he writes.

Hermann Diels had suggested that Anonymus Londinensis knew this Peripatetic doxography through the Areskonta of Alexander Philalethes, but there is little plausible justification for this view.

Only the views of Aristotle and subsequent authors are considered, including Herophilus (who appears in a comparatively positive light), Erasistratus (who is attacked together with his followers), Asclepiades of Bithynia, and Alexander Philalethes.

Diels produced the first edition of the Greek text, which was published in 1893 by the Prussian Academy of Sciences as volume III, part 1, of Supplementum Aristotelicum.

Jones reprinted Diels' Greek text together with his own English translation and commentary in The Medical Writings of Anonymus Londinensis, Cambridge University Press, 1947 (repr.

The papyrus, column 5, lines 23-45. In lines 35-37, the author quotes Aristotle/Meno: "Hippocrates says that gases ( phusai , breaths, flatus) are the causes of disease, as Aristotle has stated about him." This is followed by a more specific explanation of how these gases arise from the residues ( perissōmata , lines 42-43) of undigested food. The account is closely related to On Breaths in the Hippocratic Corpus .