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)
Learn history of medicine, learn how the medicine provide explanations for birth, death and disease. History of medicine shows how ideas have developed over the centuries, and medicine had arrived at its modern state through the course of history.
Wednesday, April 24, 2013
The most popular articles
-
Biography of Hippocrates Hippocrates is referred to ‘father of medicine’ in recognition of his lasting contributions to the field as the ...
-
Jean-Martin Charcot (29 November 1825 – 16 August 1893) was the son of a carriage-maker. He was the son and grandson of Parisian carriage ma...
-
According to the CDC, arthritis accounts for 18% or nearly 9 million reports of disability, making it the number one cause of adult disabili...
-
In the United States, ALS also is called Lou Gehrig’s disease, named for the Yankees baseball player who died of it in 1941. In Britain and ...
-
Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier (1768-1830) a French mathematician and physicist developed the mathematical methods for converting data between...
-
Lazzaro Spallanzani an Italian physicist is most often credited person for discovering ultrasonography. In 1794, he analyzed the basic mecha...
-
Paracetamol is a very widely used as medicine. It is painkiller and reduces the temperature of patients with fever. These actions are know...
-
In the early 1900s an Italian radiologist named Alessandro Vallebona invented tomography which used radiographic film to see a single slice ...