1st century pharmacopoeia of medicinal plants and medicines by Pedanius Dioscorides
This article is about a book by Dioscorides. For the body of medical knowledge, see Materia medica.
De materia medica
Cover of an early printed version, Lyon, 1554
Author
Pedanius Dioscorides
Country
Ancient Rome
Subject
Medicinal plants, drugs
Publication date
50–70 (50–70)
Pages
5 volumes
Text
De materia medica at Wikisource
De materia medica (Latin name for the Greek work Περὶ ὕλης ἰατρικῆς, Peri hulēs iatrikēs, both meaning "On Medical Material") is a pharmacopoeia of medicinal plants and the medicines that can be obtained from them. The five-volume work was written between 50 and 70 CE by Pedanius Dioscorides, a Greek physician in the Roman army. It was widely read for more than 1,500 years until supplanted by revised herbals in the Renaissance, making it one of the longest-lasting of all natural history and pharmacology books.
The work describes many drugs known to be effective, including aconite, aloes, colocynth, colchicum, henbane, opium and squill. In all, about 600 plants are covered, along with some animals and mineral substances, and around 1000 medicines made from them.
De materia medica was circulated as illustrated manuscripts, copied by hand, in Greek, Latin and Arabic throughout the mediaeval period. From the 16th century on, Dioscorides' text was translated into Italian, German, Spanish, and French, and in 1655 into English. It formed the basis for herbals in these languages by men such as Leonhart Fuchs, Valerius Cordus, Lobelius, Rembert Dodoens, Carolus Clusius, John Gerard and William Turner. Gradually these herbals included more and more direct observations, supplementing and eventually supplanting the classical text.
Several manuscripts and early printed versions of De materia medica survive, including the illustrated Vienna Dioscurides manuscript written in the original Greek in 6th-century Constantinople; it was used there by the Byzantines as a hospital text for just over a thousand years. Sir Arthur Hill saw a monk on Mount Athos still using a copy of Dioscorides to identify plants in 1934.
Demateriamedica (Latin name for the Greek work Περὶ ὕλης ἰατρικῆς, Peri hulēs iatrikēs, both meaning "On Medical Material") is a pharmacopoeia of medicinal...
Materiamedica (lit.: 'medical material/substance') is a Latin term from the history of pharmacy for the body of collected knowledge about the therapeutic...
pharmacognosy", was a Greek physician, pharmacologist, botanist, and author of Demateriamedica (Περὶ ὕλης ἰατρικῆς, On Medical Material), a 5-volume Greek encyclopedia...
word δελφίνιον (delphínion) which means "dolphin", a name used in DeMateriaMedica for some kind of larkspur. Pedanius Dioscorides said the plant got...
attributed to pre-Mongol Baghdad is the dispersed 1224 Dioscorides ( DeMateriaMedica 1224). Here again, attribution to Baghdad remains tentative, and a...
along with DeMateriaMedica it is Pliny's work that is the most frequently mentioned of the classical texts, even though Galen's (131–201 CE) De Simplicibus...
Dioscorides wrote a five-volume book, Demateriamedica, covering over 600 plants and coining the term materiamedica. It formed the basis for many medieval...
manuscript copy, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York of DeMateriaMedica, a large herbal or work on the (mostly) medical uses of plants originally...
encyclopedia, Demateriamedica, which listed over 600 herbal cures, forming an influential and long-lasting pharmacopoeia. Demateriamedica was used extensively...
appearance of the English language, Pedanius Dioscorides, in his DeMateriaMedica, had already described members of the Apocynaceae, such as Apocynum...
over 1000 recipes for medicines using over 600 medicinal plants in Demateriamedica, c. 60 AD; this formed the basis of pharmacopoeias for some 1500 years...
instead. Pedanius Dioscorides states in his 1st century AD pharmacopeia DeMateriaMedica that the Romans used the Greek rhododendron but also the Latin Oleander...
other things). He talked about rosemary in his most famous writing, DeMateriaMedica, one of the most influential herbal books in history. The herb later...
and culinary properties of "over 600 mediterranean plants" named DeMateriaMedica. Historians note that Dioscorides wrote about traveling often throughout...
Demateriamedica. Lily Y. Beck, trans. Third, revised edition. Georg Olms Verlag, 2017. p. 158. ISBN 9783487155715 Pedanius Dioscorides. DeMateria Medica:...
growth form: tree shrub; undershrub; or herb.[citation needed] The DeMateriaMedica of Dioscorides was an important early compendium of plant descriptions...
("Commentaries") on the DeMateriaMedica of Dioscorides. The first edition of Mattioli's work, the Italian translation of DeMateriaMedica, supplemented with...
Dioscurides. Euporista vel de simplicibus medicinis. 1.222.1-4, quoted in Pedanius Dioscorides, Pedanii Dioscuridis Anazarbei deMateriaMedica Libri Quinque, ed...
Greek illuminated manuscript of an even earlier 1st century AD work, Demateriamedica (Περὶ ὕλης ἰατρικῆς : Perì hylēs iatrikēs in the original Greek) by...
Pedanius Dioscorides attested to in his 1st century CE medical treatise DeMateriaMedica: There is a kind of coalesced honey called sakcharon [i.e. sugar]...
plants. Rhodiola rosea was first described by Pedanius Dioscorides in DeMateriaMedica. Many North American plants formerly included in R. rosea are now...
Natural History and Celsus's De Medicina. Pedanius Dioscorides drew on and corrected earlier authors for his DeMateriaMedica, adding much new material;...
Greek word μυρσινίτης (myrsinites), which was used in Dioscorides's DeMateriaMedica to describe its similarity to μυρσίνη (myrsine), aka myrtle (Myrtus...
(referring to their herbals). However, after reading Dioscorides's DeMateriaMedica he realised that "our [i.e. English] Alexander is not Smyrniū in Dioscorides...
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