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SERAPION is a name held by three medical writers. Serapion of Alexandria, who flourished in the first half of the second century B.C., was the founder of the empirical school of medicine. He based all his data on experiment and on reliable clinical cases. The second Serapion was Yahya ibn-Sarafyun, called "Serapion the Elder," of the second half of the ninth century, a Christian physician who wrote two medical compilations in Syriac. One of these was translated into Latin by Gerard of Cremona as Practica sive breviarium before 1187. Its last book, which dealt with antidotes, was very popular during the period. The third Serapion, called "Serapion the Younger," possibly a Christian, wrote in Arabic. His treatise, translated into Latin as Liber de simplici medicina (The Book of Simple Medicine) or Liber aggregatus (The Aggregate of Medicine), was derived from Byzantine and Muslim sources and enjoyed much popularity. Between 1360 and 1385 Merton College Library owned a copy.

Serapion is one of the Physician's authorities, Gen Prol 432. Chaucer does not say which Serapion is meant.


G. Sarton, Introduction to the History of Science, I: 186-187, 608, II, 1: 229.
From CHAUCER NAME DICTIONARY
Copyright © 1988, 1996 Jacqueline de Weever
Published by Garland Publishing, Inc., New York and London.

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