cad40–cad90 resident in the Eastern Roman Empire, Dioscorides was a Greek-speaking physician who wrote the long-influential Materia Medica (in Greek) in five books.
Keywords: pharmacology and medicine, Roman; drugs, Greco-Roman; herbals, Roman
Dioscorides of Anazarbus
John Scarborough, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin, USA
Published online: January 2002
DOI: 10.1038/npg.els.0003612
| Further Reading | |
| book Berendes J (1902/1983) Des Pedanios Dioskurides aus Anazarbos Arzneimittellehre. Stuttgart: Verlag von Ferdinand Enke/Schann, Liechtenstein: Sändig Reprint Verlag. [Still the most reliable translation into a modern European language; the commentary is fulsome, reflecting the excellent pharmacology in Germany at the turn of the twentieth century.] | |
| book Mazal O (1981) Pflanzen Wurzeln Säfte Samen: Antike Heilkunste in Miniaturen des Wiener Dioskurides. Graz: Akademishe Druck-u. Verlagsanstalt. [A selection of colour plates, with commentary, of the famous Vienna Codex of ad 512.] | |
| book Riddle JM (1974) "Dioscorides". In: Gillispie CC (ed.) Dictionary of Scientific Biography (1970–1980), vol. IV pp. 119–123. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. [Full account of manuscript development and the history of the Materia Medica to the Renaissance.] | |
| book Riddle JM (1985) Dioscorides on Pharmacy and Medicine. Austin: University of Texas Press. [The only modern study that commands the manuscripts, especially Latin and less so Greek; Riddle's overviews are superb, and it is here that he develops his theory of the undescribed ‘drug affinity system’ employed by Dioscorides.] | |
| Scarborough J and Nutton V (1982) The Preface of Dioscorides’ Materia Medica: Introduction, Translation, Commentary. Transactions and Studies of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia ns 4: 187–227. [Translation rendered from the Wellman text.] | |
| book Wellman M (ed.) (1906–1914) Pedanii Diocuridis Anazarbei De materia medica libri quinque 3 vols. Berlin: Weidmann. (Reprinted 1958.) [This is the best edited Greek text, with full apparatus criticus.] | |
