Marcellus Empiricus

Marcellus Empiricus, also known as Marcellus Burdigalensis (“Marcellus of Bordeaux”), was a Latin medical writer from Gaul at the turn of the 4th and 5th centuries. His only extant work is the De medicamentis, a compendium of pharmacological preparations drawing on the work of multiple medical and scientific writers as well as on folk remedies and magic. It is a significant if quirky text in the history of European medical writing, an infrequent subject of monographs, but regularly mined as a source for magic charms, Celtic herbology and lore, and the linguistic study of Gaulish and Vulgar Latin.[1] Bonus auctor est (“he’s a good authority”) was the judgment of J.J. Scaliger,[2] while the science historian George Sarton called the De medicamentis an “extraordinary mixture of traditional knowledge, popular (Celtic) medicine, and rank superstition.”[3] Marcellus is usually identified with the magister officiorum of that name who held office during the reign of Theodosius I.

  1. ^ Carmélia Opsomer and Robert Halleux, “Marcellus ou le mythe empirique,” in Les écoles médicales à Rome. Actes du 2ème Colloque international sur les textes médicaux latins antiques, Lausanne, septembre 1986, edited by Philippe Mudry and Jackie Pigeaud (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1991), p. 160.
  2. ^ In the Prima Scaligerana of 1740, cited by George W. Robinson, “Joseph Scaliger’s Estimates of Greek and Latin Authors,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 29 (1918) p. 160.
  3. ^ George Sarton, Introduction to the History of Science (1927), vol. 1, p. 391.