that the book did not altogether disappear. It was not until the year 1443 that Thomas de Sazanne, afterward Pope Nicholas V., discovered a copy of the work in the church of Saint Ambrosius, at Milan, but it was only in 1478 that the book was printed for the first time (at Florence). Then, as if to make up for the long neglect to which it had been subjected, no fewer than sixty Latin editions were issued during the two succeeding centuries; and, in addition, it was eventually translated into every modern European language.
Scribonius Largus, a Roman physician who lived during the reigns of Tiberius and Claudius (14-54 A. D.), owes his celebrity to the fact that he wrote and published (in 47 A. D.) a book containing a collection of the best medical formulae and popular recipes known at that time. He appears to have had a large private practice and to have spent a considerable portion of his professional life in the service of the army. He accompanied the Emperor Claudius, for example, in his campaign against Britain (43 A. D.), and the book which he wrote, and which has just been mentioned, was dedicated by him to that emperor. According to Neuburger, Scribonius is to be credited with having been the first to describe correctly the proper manner of obtaining the drug known as opium, and also the first to recommend, in the treatment of severe headaches, the employment of electric shocks as communicated by the fish called the "electric ray."
Medical practice at that period, says Le Clerc, was divided among three kinds of practitioners—those who treated their cases exclusively by dietetic measures, those who effected cures by surgical means, and those who took charge only of such patients as required chiefly the employment of external remedies. But Scribonius Largus insists that such a division was more theoretical than real, as no one of these classes could get along without the co-*operation of the others.
C. Plinius Secundus, commonly called Pliny the Elder, was born near the beginning of the first century of the Christian era, either at Verona or at Como in the north
