De Medicina<note place="margin" anchored="true">Or <foreign xml:lang="la">Medicamentis</foreign></note> ex Animalibusthe author of a short Latin work, entitled
De Medicina (or <hi rend="ital">Medicamentis</hi>) ex Animalibus, consisting of thirty-four chapters,
each of which treats of some animal whose body was supposed to possess certain medical
properties. As might be expected, it contains numerous absurdities, and is of little or no
value or interest. The author has been sometimes confounded with other persons of the name
of
Sextus (see Fabric.
Bibl. Gr. vol. xii. p. 613,
ed. vet.), and is generally distinguished from them by the additional name of
Papyriesis or
Plapiensis. He appears from various
parts of his work (
e.g. 100.27) to have been a physician, but nothing
else is known of his personal history. His date is uncertain, but he is supposed to have
lived in the fourth century after Christ. He is said to have borrowed much from Pliny's
Natural History, and to have been copied in turn by Constantinus Africanus.
Editions
The work has several times been published, both separately, and in different medical
collections. It first appeared in 1538, 4to. Norimberg., ed. Fr. Emericus;
and again in the same year, 8vo. Basil. ed. Alb. Torinus. It is
inserted (after Oribasius) in the first volume of II. Stephani "Medicae Artis Principes,"
Paris, fol. 1567; in the thirteenth volume of the old edition of Fabricii Bibl. Graeca ;
in Ackermann's Parabilium Medicamentorum Scriptores
Antiqui, Norimb. 1788, 8vo.; and elsewhere.