The most ancient Western encyclopedia extant, Pliny’s Historia contained essentially all that was known in his time concerning geography, mineralogy, anthropology, botany, zoology and meteorology. Books XX-XXXII deal with medicine. Because of its practical value, Historia naturalis was one work of classical antiquity which, despite the sometimes unreliable nature of its material, was frequently copied, and read steadily throughout the Middle Ages. Pliny's botanical errors were not corrected until 1492 (Leoniceno, see No. 1798).

Pliny’s work was one of the very first scientific texts to be printed. The first English translation by Philemon Holland appeared in 1601. The modern English translation of the Natural History with parallel Latin text is that of W.H.S. Jones, H. Rackham, and D.E. Eichholz in the Loeb Classical Library, 10 vols., Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1948-63. The 1469 edition is ISTC No. ip00786000; Digital facsimile from Bibliothèque Sainte Geneviève, Paris, at the Internet Archive, at this link.