Ricettario medico

Editio princeps of a fragment of papyrus roll to be dated to the first century BCE and preserving part of a medical recipe-book divided in chapters and concerning different types of medicaments. The column of writing bears the end of the section on the malagmata (emollient plasters) and the beginning of the section on the akopa synchrismata (ointments against aches). The text is very important for the history of ancient medicine, as it is the oldest instance of a recipe-book organized in the way we’ll find later in Celsus’ De Medicina 17-25, in Galen’s De compositione medicamentorum per genera and in Paul of Aegina’s Compendium book VII. More in particular, P.Köln 437 is the first example of a pharmacological-therapeutic treatise contemporary or preceding the lost works of pharmacologists (Heras, Andromachos, Damocrates, Asclepiades) who were Galen’s source for his sections on malagmata and akopa.