Serapion the Younger

He is called "the Younger" to distinguish him from Serapion the Elder, aka Yahya ibn Sarafyun, an earlier medical writer with whom he was often confused.

In the book's early part, Serapion the Younger classifies substances according to their medicinal properties, and discourses on their actions.

There is also a manuscript of it in a Latin-to-Italian translation dated 1390-1404 which contains many colorer illustrations of plants, and which historians have named the "Carrara Herbal".

Very many lengthy extracts from Serapion's book are recycled in a Latin medicine encyclopedia written by Matthaeus Silvaticus dated 1317, which was itself widely circulated in late medieval Latin and printed many times during the early decades after the invention of the printing press.

The primary historical interest in Serapion's book arises from the fact that it was widely read by medical-botany scholars in Latin in the years 1300 – 1550 and it had a role in the transmission of medieval Arabic medicinal knowledge to the medieval Latins.

It is judged today to be inferior to a comparable compilation by Ibn al-Baitar titled Book of Simple Medicaments and Foods dated 1240s.