Dioscorides

Pedanius Dioscorides (ca. 40 AD in Anazarba, Turkey - ca 90 AD) was a Greek physician whose de materia Medica (on Medical Matters) is an important source on the knowledge of medicinal plants used by the Greeks and Romans. The book was widely used in early herbals.

There is little information about Dioscorides' life. The only reliable source is the preface to the Materia Medica from which we can deduce that he must have been a physician. In the preface Dioscorides writes the following: "Since I was a youth, I have shown a continuous interest in the knowledge of medical materials and I have traveled in numerous lands - for, as you know, I have lived a soldier-like life." This phrase is enough for many to think that he was a legionary physician under Claudius and Nero.

The Materia Medica is one of the most influential books on herbs in history. For over sixteen hundred years the knowledge of herbs, animals and minerals used as drugs came from this source. Dioscorides was not "rediscovered" in the Renaissance as many others because his book had never left circulation.

Illustrated copies of his treatises survive as manuscripts from the 5th and 7th centuries; there exist early translations as well. The most famous of these is the Wiener Dioskurides (512/513).