Abstract
A passage by Sextus Placitus Papyriensis (century ?) that deals with the medicinal properties of human urine presents two difficulties : 1) the title Ad elefantiam refers to a therapeutic content, but the passage is made up of two recipes, a medicine one and a goldsmithing one ; 2) the goldsmithing recipe mentions the efficacy of urine to weld gold, but does not explain the procedure, making the text seem incomplete. An internal examination of the chapter demonstrates that Sextus Placitus extracts previous sources, but each extract is reused as a block without the removal of superfluous details in the new passage. Moreover, Sextus Placitus refers to an artificial preparation known as chrysocolla in the goldsmithing recipe, but does not mention its name or its preparation procedure. This information was common knowledge among his contemporaries and could therefore be omitted from the text without causing comprehension problems.
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