Pedanius Dioscorides was born in Anazarbus which was part of the Roman province of Cilicia.
He was a Greek surgeon who served in Emperor Nero’s (AD 54-68) Roman Army and who, in the course of his military travels, complied what some consider to be the best description of medical botany to his name.
His great herbal was probably written around 60-78 BC, and mentioned 850 plants, animals, and minerals with discussion of their medical and non-medical uses. De Materia Medica described more than 600 plants with medical uses, 90 of which are still in use.
As an army physician, Dioscorides concentrated on soldier’s medicine, particularly wounds, But De Materia Medica also included a great deal of herbal folk wisdom.
De Materia Medica remained a standard reference for centuries and until the early 1600s, books on medical botany were little more than commentaries on Discorides’s work.
Until his classification was supplanted by that of Carolus Linnaeus in the 18th century, he stood as the foremost authority on pharmacy for more than sixteen hundred years.
He was recognized not only by later Roman and Byzantium writers but also by Islamic scholars.
Dioscorides (AD 40 - 90)
The most popular articles
-
Bilharzia or schistosomiasis is more insidious that sleeping sickness, for it is a debilitating disease rather than a killer. It is named a... -
The Papyrus Ebers, and Egyptian manual of therapeutics from 1500 BC, describes a disease characterized by pallor, dyspnea and edema that ma...
-
Alexander Ogston (1844-1929) was a Scottish surgeon who in 1880 first observed staphylococci while performing experiments to prove his theor...
-
Paracetamol is a very widely used as medicine. It is painkiller and reduces the temperature of patients with fever. These actions are know...
-
The seventeenth century BC Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus has descriptions of patient with wounds who have symptoms of neck stiffness and thou... -
History of Arthritis Perhaps the oldest known type of arthritis, gout or gouty arthritis has been described since Hippocrates in the 5th... -
Galen on Herophilus Herophilus ‘attained the highest degree of accuracy in things which became known by dissection and he obtained the grea... -
Noah Worcester, a Dartmouth graduated after studying in the Parisian clinics join the faculty of the newly founded Medical School of Ohio. ...
