Hexametri precepta medicine continentes.

Leipzig: Valentin Schumann ("in officina Valentini Dammandri"), 1515. Fine. Octavo (21 cm); 32 leaves. Title and postscript set in large gothic type; text in roman. Woodcut title page within four-sided border, includes human figures with stylized plants, a putto, birds, etc. About 66 woodcut initials. In recent quarter leather over marbled boards. References: Durling 4189; BM/STC German 815; This edition not in Adams, Wellcome, Osler, etc.. Title page reproduced in J. Luther, "Die Titeleinfassungen der Reformationszeit," pl. 89.

From what modern scholarship can discern, Serenus was a poet who had a keen interest in medical science and pharmaceuticals. He is famous for using the formula "abracadabra" in the treatment of illness, and for amassing a personal library of 60,000 scrolls. The 1,107 hexameter lines that make up this essay were inspired by the "Medicina Plinii," a book of pharmacy by a pseudo-Pliny of the mid-4th-century, as well as the real Pliny's Natural History and the Greek guide to materia medica by Dioscorides. The text consists of prescriptions and remedies for about 65 different diseases. The poem was extremely influential in the practice of Late-Antique and Medieval medicine. It was reprinted 21 times between the first edition of 1484 and 1731, apart from inclusion in many compilations of medical texts. As late as 1866 it was translated into German, Prescriptions cover a range of ailments from headache, itching, elephantiasis, bad breath, gall stones, pimples, treatment of wounds, and even money bites. The text is followed by Remmius Flavianus, "Carmen de ponderibus et mensuris," a versified explanation of weights and measurees specifically for use by physicians.