1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Largus, Scribonius

LARGUS, SCRIBONIUS, court physician to the emperor Claudius. About A.D. 47, at the request of Gaius Julius Callistus, the emperor’s freedman, he drew up a list of 271 prescriptions (Compositiones), most of them his own, although he acknowledged his indebtedness to his tutors, to friends and to the writings of eminent physicians. Certain old wives’ remedies are also included. The work has no pretensions to style, and contains many colloquialisms. The greater part of it was transferred without acknowledgment to the work of Marcellus Empiricus (c. 410), De Medicamentis Empiricis, Physicis, et Rationabilibus, which is of great value for the correction of the text of Largus.

See the edition of the Compositiones by G. Helmreich (Teubner series, 1887).