Information about Pedanius Dioscorides

Pedanius Dioscorides

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".

Arabic Book of Simple Drugs from Dioscorides’ Materia Medica. Cumin & dill. c. 1334 By Kathleen Cohen in London's British Museum.

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).

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)

External links

• • [ e] Anesthetic: Ancient anaesthesia
Plants/animals	Aconite • Argyreia speciosa • Beaver • Cannabis • Coca • Deadly nightshade • Henbane • Lactucarium • Mandrake • Metel nut • Opium • Poison hemlock • Saussurea • Toloatzin • Willow
People	al-Qasim • al-Razi • Avicenna • Celsus • Dioscorides • Galen • Hippocrates • Susrutha • Theophrastus • Zhang Ji
Molecules	Aconitine • Δ9-THC • Atropine • Cocaine • Coniine • Hyoscyamine • Morphine • Salicylate • Scopolamine

Greek}}}
Writing system: Greek alphabet
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Official language of: Greece
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This article is about the year 90.

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The term ancient Greece refers to the periods of Greek history in Classical Antiquity, lasting ca. 750 BC^[1] (the archaic period) to 146 BC (the Roman conquest). It is generally considered to be the seminal culture which provided the foundation of Western Civilization.
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physician applies to a person who practices some type of medicine. Such medical practitioners are concerned with maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis and treatment of disease and injury, through both an area of knowledge
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Pharmacology is the study of how drugs interact with living organisms to produce a change in function.^[1] If substances have medicinal properties, they are considered pharmaceuticals.
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Botany is the scientific study of plant life. As a branch of biology, it is also called plant science(s), phytology, or plant biology. Botany covers a wide range of scientific disciplines that study plants, algae, and fungi including: structure, growth,
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Cilicia (Greek: Κιλικία; Armenian: Կիլիկիա) was a commonly used name of the south coastal region of the Anatolian penninsula, now known as Çukurova, and a political entity in Roman times.
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Ancient Rome was a civilization that grew from a small agricultural community founded on the Italian Peninsula circa the 9th century BC to a massive empire straddling the Mediterranean Sea.
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Nero
Emperor of the Roman Empire

Nero at Glyptothek, Munich
Reign October 13, 54 – June 9, 68
(Proconsul from 51)
Full name Nero Claudius Caesar
Augustus Germanicus
Born November 15 37
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History of the city of Rome spans 2,800 years of the existence of a city that grew from a small Italian village in the 9th century BC into the center of a vast civilization that dominated the Mediterranean region for centuries, but was eventually overrun by Germanic tribes, marking
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History of Greece traditionally encompasses the study of the Greek people, the areas they ruled historically, and the territory now composing the modern state of Greece.
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Materia medica is a Latin medical term for the body of collected knowledge about the therapeutic properties of any substance used for healing. Nowadays we would call these drugs. In Latin, the term literally means "medical matters".
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Pharmacopoeia (literally, the art of the drug compounder), in its modern technical sense, is a book containing directions for the identification of samples and the preparation of compound medicines, and published by the authority of a government or a medical or pharmaceutical
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Renaissance (French for "rebirth"; Italian: Rinascimento; Spanish: Renacimiento), was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th through the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe.
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al-‘Arabiyyah in written Arabic (Kufic script):
Pronunciation: /alˌʕa.raˈbij.ja/
Spoken in: Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman,
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Dacian}}}
Language codes
ISO 639-1: none
ISO 639-2: ine
ISO 639-3: xdc
Indo-European topics
Indo-European languages
Albanian Anatolian Armenian
Baltic Celtic Dacian Germanic
Greek Indo-Iranian Italic Phrygian
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Thracians were a group of ancient Indo-European tribes who spoke the Thracian language - a scarcely attested branch of the Indo-European language family. Those peoples inhabited the Eastern, Central and Southern part of the Balkan peninsula, as well as the adjacent parts of Eastern
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Vienna Dioscurides (Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. med. gr. 1.) is an early 6th century copy of De materia medica by Dioscurides. It is an important and rare example of a late antique scientific text.
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This is a list of plant names in Dacian, an ancient language of South Eastern Europe, from Dioscorides' De Materia Medica (abb. MM) and Pseudo-Apuleius' Herbarius (abb. Herb.).
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Anesthesia or anaesthesia (see spelling differences; from Greek αν- an- “without” + αἲσθησις aisthesis
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Aconitum
L., 1753

Species
See below

Aconitum (A-co-ní-tum), known as aconite, monkshood, or wolfsbane, is a genus of flowering plant belonging to the buttercup family (Ranunculaceae).
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Argyreia

Species: A. nervosa

Binomial name
Argyreia nervosa
(Burm.f.) Bojer

Synonyms
Argyreia speciosa (L.f.
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Castor
Linnaeus, 1758

Species
C. canadensis
C. fiber
†C. californicus
Beavers are semi-aquatic rodents native to North America and Europe.
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Pedanius Dioscorides

See also

References

External links