Dioscorides Pedanius

    An ancient Roman physician (of Greek origin), pharmacologist, and naturalist, one of the founders of pharmacognosy and botany.

    He was born in Anazarbus, Cilicia, Asia Minor (modern-day Nazarva). By profession, he was a military physician and traveled extensively with the Roman army during the reign of Emperor Nero, engaging in military medicine, collecting, and identifying plants.

   He described himself as having lived the life of a soldier and admitted that he enjoyed traveling through Greece, Crete, Egypt, and Petra.
     He had access to the library in Alexandria (Egypt), and possibly studied in Tarsus (Cilicia, Asia Minor).

    Between 60 and 70 AD, after long direct observations of plants in their natural habitats and careful study of the local population’s experience with medicinal herbs and extracts obtained from animals and minerals, Dioscorides wrote his main work De materia medica (“On Medical Substances”) – this work was written in Greek, but its title is given in Latin. 

     De materia medica (“On Medical Substances”) contains descriptions of 600 medicinal plants and 1000 different medical preparations.
      It consists of five books and contains information “on the preparation, properties, and testing of medicines” (as Dioscorides himself writes in the Preface to Book 1), with each chapter dedicated to the description of one substance, its characteristics, preparation, and therapeutic properties.
     Unlike his predecessors, Dioscorides was characterized by exceptional skepticism towards others’ opinions; he was not inclined to revere authorities, so he personally verified all the information he received and researched the effects of each plant and preparation on himself and the soldiers of the Roman army (fortunately, he did not lack patients).

       In his work De materia medica (“On Medical Substances”), Dioscorides classified all plants into 4 groups: aromatic, edible, medicinal, and vinicultural.
     Medicinal (or therapeutic) plants, according to Dioscorides, are divided into “therapeutic groups based on dynamic, kinetic medicinal action”: warming, astringent, emollient, drying, cooling, thickening, relaxing, nourishing.
     Dioscorides was the first to classify medicinal plants by their therapeutic groups based on the similarity of their medicinal (what we would now call pharmacological) action. This organizational format was a significant contribution to science and, in essence, was a precursor to the creation of pharmacopoeias.
    In the Middle Ages, De materia medica was considered the primary source of knowledge in botany and pharmacology.

     Many plant names that are used today were given by Dioscorides. Only in the 16th century, when knowledge about nature became more extensive, did botanists begin to create their own descriptions of plants, without reference to Dioscorides.

     The works of Dioscorides are mentioned by Galen and Pliny.   
   Unlike many ancient authors, the works of Dioscorides did not require “rediscovery” during the Renaissance, as they never disappeared from the realm of professional interest.
   Numerous Greek manuscripts, as well as Arabic and Latin translations of his works, exist. Over 1500 years, they were repeatedly copied with the addition of illustrations, comments, and excerpts from Arabic and Indian sources. Many of these manuscripts have survived to this day, the earliest of which date back to the 5th–7th centuries AD.
   The most famous of them is the “Vienna Dioscorides,” created in the early 6th century in Constantinople and now housed in the Austrian National Library. With 435 meticulously executed illustrations of plants and animals, the “Vienna Dioscorides” represents not only a scientific but also an artistic monument, an example of Byzantine style.
    In 1997, UNESCO included the “Vienna Dioscorides” in the international register “Memory of the World”.

     Dioscorides’ aphorism: “The last thing we shed before death is the garments of glory.”