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Historical Bibliography Updated: June 17, 2026

Libri septem, nunc primum e tenebris eruti a Junio Paulo Crasso Patavino accuratissime in Latinum sermonem versi. Ruffi Ephesii medici clarissimi, De corporis humani partium appelationibus libri tres.

Publication Details

Venice: apud Iuntas, 1552 CE.

Aretaeus, a Greek physician who lived during the reign of Nero or Vespasian, wrote a general treatise on diseases which displays great accuracy in the detail of symptoms, and is of great value in the diagnosis of disease. His work, written in Ionic Greek, survived in relatively complete form. It consists of 8 books, the Latin translation of the titles of which are De causis et signis acutorum morborum (2 books), De causis et signis diuturnorum morborum (2 books), De curatione acutorum morborum (2 books), and De curatione diuturnorum morborum (2 books). Aretaeus's works were first published in Latin translation by Junius Paulus Crassus (Giunio Paolo Grassi) along with Grassi's translation of Rufus of Ephesus, in 1552. Rufus's work is the earliest treatise on the anatomical nomenclature of the human body. Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

Aretaeus's Greek text was first published in Paris by classical scholar and printer Adrianus Turnebus (Adrien Turnèbe or Tournebeuf) in 1554.Though the editor of that edition is unidentified, the work has been attributed to Jacques Goupyl. In 1723 a major edition in folio was published at the Clarendon press at Oxford, edited by John Wigan, containing an improved text, a new Latin version, learned dissertations and notes, and a copious index by Michel Maittaire. In 1731, Herman Boerhaave brought out a new annotated edition, of which the text and Latin version had been printed before the appearance of Wigan's; this edition contained annotations by Pierre Petit and Daniel Wilhelm Triller, as well as all the notes in Wigan's edition. The edition by C. G. Kühn, Leipzig 1828, included Wigan's text, Latin version, dissertations, etc., together with Petit's commentary, Triller's emendations, and Maittaire's index.The more recent standard edition is by Karl Hude (1860–1936) in the Corpus medicorum graecorum (2nd ed., Berlin, Akademie-Verlag, 1958, online at this link.The four books, De causis et signis, were published in an annotated bilingual edition in Greek and French, Arétée de Cappadoce, Des causes et des signes des maladies aiguës et chroniques, trans. R.T.H. Laennec, ed. and comm. Mirko D. Grmek, pref. by Danielle Gourevitch, Geneva, 2000.

 

Catalog MetadataReference Information
Entry Number#6976
Permanent Linkhttps://staging.historyofmedicine.com/entry/9142
Author Bio LinkWikipedia ↗
External URLlibri-septem-rufus-of-ephesus-fl-1st-century-ad-de-corporis-humani-partium-appellationbus-libri-tres-both-texts-translated-from-greek-into-latin-by-junius-paulus-crassus-ca-150075

Geographic Context

Publication place: Venice

Mentioned in annotation: Leipzig; Berlin; Oxford; Geneva; Paris