This MedLibrary.org supplementary page on Dioscorides is provided directly from the open source Wikipedia as a service to our readers. Please see the note below on authorship of this content, as well as the Wikipedia usage guidelines. To search for other content from our encyclopedia supplement, please use the form below:
Related Sponsors
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 in his native Greek Περί ύλης ιατρικής (De Materia Medica - in the latin translation) 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 most important manuscripts survive today in Mount Athos monasteries.
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
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
- German translation of Materia Medica, 1902
- Plates showing many pages from an original illuminated Greek manuscript of the Materia Medica
- Dioscoride: Digitized Editions
- Free downloads of all 5 books of Dioscorides in modern english, with indexes, not for resale. Also copyright-free botanical illustrations to download
|
|||||||||||
Wikipedia content modification information:
- This page was last modified on 9 October 2008, at 11:45.
Wikipedia Authorship and Review
Wikipedia content provided here is not reviewed directly by MedLibrary.org. Wikipedia content is authored by an open community of volunteers and is not produced by or in any way affiliated with MedLibrary.org.
Wikipedia Usage Guidelines
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article on "Dioscorides".
The URL for this specific entry is:
All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details). Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.