INTRODUCTION

Books XX–XXVII of Pliny’s Natural History are concerned with the uses of trees, plants, and flowers, especially in medicine. To understand his treatment of this subject, it is necessary to examine the diseases he dealt with and the nature of the remedies he prescribed.

DISEASES OF ITALY, AND THEIR NAMES IN PLINY

The chief diseases in Pliny’s day were those of the chest, skin, and eyes, together with various forms of malaria—often called ague—which might be intermittent or remittent. The ordinary infectious fevers—smallpox, measles, scarlet fever, diphtheria, enteric, and influenza—were apparently unknown. Enteric fever is difficult to categorize because it is so similar to certain types of remittent malaria, which was very prevalent; only a microscope can distinguish between them. Plague (pestis, pestilentia) often appeared in epidemic form and, when not a case of malignant malaria, was probably typhus or bubonic plague. The main difficulty in finding modern equivalents for ancient diseases lies in the old method of diagnosis, which relied on general symptoms. Two cases that were superficially alike were usually called by the same name. Many conditions besides gout were included under the term podagra (gout), many besides leprosy under lepra, and many besides cancer under carcinoma.