Medicina Plinii

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.

[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.

The first requires a nail that was used in a crucifixion, which is to be bound to the head with a strip of cloth, or a rope from a cross, then sprinkled with calcined cow manure.

[9] In the eight sentences of remedies — involving, among other substances, dill seed, hare's heart, a boy's urine, and a frog boiled in oil, not to mention the capture, ear-clipping, and release of a live mouse — the absence of syntactical transitions makes it less clear than in the work of Marcellus whether a sequence of treatment is meant or a series of alternatives offered.

The chapter concludes with a charm and careful instructions to the practitioner: You write the following on a virgin sheet of papyrus, which the patient is to wear fastened on his right wrist: 'Back off from this person Gaius Seius, Fever, Solomon pursues you.'