Paulus Aegineta without naming them, yet he makes use of whatever he finds to his purpose both in the old and modern writers, Greeks as well "barbarians"; and indeed we find in him several things that are not to be met with elsewhere. The work was written extempore, and designed for the use of Apocauchus during his embassy to the north. A Latin translation of this work by Corn. H. Mathisius, was first published in 1554. The first four books appear sometimes to have been considered to form a complete work, of which the first and second have been inserted by Ideler in the second volume of his Physici et Medici Graeci Minores (1542), under the title (Lat. De Morborum Dignotione), and from which the Greek extracts in H. Stephens's Dictionarium Medicum (1564) are probably taken. The fifth and sixth books have also been taken for a separate work, and were published by themselves in a Latin translation by Ioannes Ruellius (1539), with the title De Medicamentorum Compositione. An extract from this work is inserted in Jean Fernel's collection of writers De Febribus (1576). (Lat. De Urinis). A treatise on urine in seven books. Actuarius treated of this subject fully and distinctly, and, though he goes upon the plan which Theophilus Protospatharius had marked out, yet he has added a great deal of original matter. It is the most complete and systematic work on the subject that remains from antiquity, so much so that, till the chemical improvements of the 19th century, he had left hardly anything new to be said by the moderns, many of whom transcribed it almost word for word. This work was first published in a Latin translation by Ambrose Leo (1519), and has been reprinted numerous times; the Greek original was published for the first time in the second volume of Ideler's work quoted above. Two Latin editions of his collected works are said by Choulant to have been published in the same year, 1556, one at Paris, and the other at Lyons. References Notes Further reading Dambasis, I. Ioannes Actuarius. Iatrika Chronika, 19661; vol. 7: 206 (in Greek) Hohlweg, A. "John Actuarius' de Methodo Medendi." In: Scarborough, J, ed. Symposium on Byzantine Medicine. Dumbarton Oaks Papers, Washington, Columbia, 1984; 121–133. 1275 births 1328 deaths Urologists 14th-century Byzantine physicians 13th-century Byzantine physicians 13th-century Byzantine writers 14th-century Byzantine writers