Pedanius Dioscorides

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Pedanius Dioscorides (Greek: Πεδάνιος Διοσκορίδης; ca. 40-ca. 90) was an ancient Greek physician, pharmacologist and botanist from Anazarbus, Cilicia, Asia Minor, who practised in ancient Rome during the time of Nero. He had the opportunity to travel extensively seeking medicinal substances from all over the Roman and Greek world.

Dioscorides is famous for writing a five volume book De Materia Medica that is a precursor to all modern pharmacopeias, and is one of the most influential herbal books in history. In fact it remained in use until about CE 1600. Unlike many classical authors, his works were not "rediscovered" in the Renaissance, because his book never left circulation. The Materia Medica was often reproduced in manuscript form through the centuries, often with commentary on Dioscorides' work and with minor additions from Arabic and Indian sources, though there were some advancements in herbal science among the Arabic additions.

The Materia Medica is important not just for the history of herbal science: it also gives us a knowledge of the herbs and remedies used by the Greeks, Romans, and other cultures of antiquity. The work also records the Dacian and Thracian names for some plants, which otherwise would have been lost. The work presents about 500 plants in all, although the descriptions are obscurely phrased, and as Duane Isely puts it "numerous individuals from the Middle Ages on have struggled with the identity of the recondite kinds", and characterizes most of the identifications of Gunther et al as "educated guesses".

A number of illustrated manuscripts of the Materia Medica survive, some of them from as early as the 5th through 7th centuries. The most famous of these early copies is the Vienna Dioscurides (512/513).

See also

• Vienna Dioscurides
• List of Dacian plant names

References

• Duane Isely, One hundred and one botanists (Iowa State University Press, 1994), pp. 10-13
• R.T. Gunther, ed. The Greek Herbal of Dioscorides (Oxford University Press, 1933)