De Materia Medica

(Latin name for the Greek work , , 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.

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 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.

Book

Between 50 and 70 AD, a Greek physician in the Roman army, Dioscorides, wrote a five-volume book in his native Greek, (, "On Medical Material"), known more widely in Western Europe by its Latin title . He had studied pharmacology at Tarsus in Roman Anatolia (now Turkey). The book became the principal reference work on pharmacology across Europe and the Middle East for over 1,500 years, and was thus the precursor of all modern pharmacopoeias.

In contrast to many classical authors, was not "rediscovered" in the Renaissance, because it never left circulation; indeed, Dioscorides' text eclipsed the Hippocratic Corpus. In the medieval period, was circulated in Latin, Greek, and Arabic. In the Renaissance from 1478 onwards, it was printed in Italian, German, Spanish, and French as well. In 1655, John Goodyer made an English translation from a printed version, probably not corrected from the Greek.

While being reproduced in manuscript form through the centuries, the text was often supplemented with commentary and minor additions from Arabic and Indian sources. Several illustrated manuscripts of survive. The most famous is the lavishly illustrated ''Vienna Dioscurides'' (the ''Juliana Anicia Codex''), written in the original Greek in Byzantine Constantinople in 512/513 AD; its illustrations are sufficiently accurate to permit identification, something not possible with later medieval drawings of plants; some of them may be copied from a lost volume owned by Juliana Anicia's great grandfather, Theodosius II, in the early 5th century. The ''Naples Dioscurides'' and '' Morgan Dioscurides'' are somewhat later Byzantine manuscripts in Greek, while other Greek manuscripts survive today in the monasteries of Mount Athos. Densely-illustrated Arabic copies survive from the 12th and 13th centuries. The result is a complex set of relationships between manuscripts, involving translation, copying errors, additions of text and illustrations, deletions, reworkings, and a combination of copying from one manuscript and correction from another.

is the prime historical source of information about the medicines used by the Greeks, Romans, and other cultures of antiquity. The work also records the Dacian names for some plants, which otherwise would have been lost. The work presents about 600 medicinal plants in all, along with some animals and mineral substances, and around 1,000 medicines made from these sources. Botanists have not always found Dioscorides' plants easy to identify from his short descriptions, partly because he had naturally described plants and animals from southeastern Europe, whereas by the 16th century his book was in use all over Europe and across the Islamic world. This meant that people attempted to force a match between the plants they knew and those described by Dioscorides, leading to what could be catastrophic results.

Approach

Each entry gives a substantial amount of detail on the plant or substance in question, concentrating on medicinal uses but giving such mention of other uses (such as culinary) and help with recognition as considered necessary. For example, on the "Mekon Agrios and Mekon Emeros", the opium poppy and related species, Dioscorides states that the seed of one is made into bread: it has "a somewhat long little head and white seed", while another "has a head bending down" and a third is "more wild, more medicinal and longer than these, with a head somewhat long — and they are all cooling." After this brief description, he moves at once into pharmacology, saying that they cause sleep; other uses are to treat inflammation and erysipela, and if boiled with honey to make a cough mixture. The account thus combines recognition, pharmacological effect, and guidance on drug preparation. Its effects are summarized, accompanied by a caution:

Dioscorides then describes how to tell a good from a counterfeit preparation. He mentions the recommendations of other physicians, Diagoras (according to Eristratus), Andreas, and Mnesidemus, only to dismiss them as false and not borne out by experience. He ends with a description of how the liquid is gathered from poppy plants, and lists names used for it: ''chamaesyce'', ''mecon'' ''rhoeas'', ''oxytonon''; ''papaver'' to the Romans, and ''wanti'' to the Egyptians.

As late as in the Tudor and Stuart periods in Britain, herbals often still classified plants in the same way as Dioscorides and other classical authors, not by their structure or apparent relatedness but by how they smelt and tasted, whether they were edible, and what medicinal uses they had. Only when European botanists like Matthias de l'Obel, Andrea Cesalpino and Augustus Quirinus Rivinus (Bachmann) had done their best to match plants they knew to those listed in Dioscorides did they go further and create new classification systems based on similarity of parts, whether leaves, fruits, or flowers.

Contents

The book is divided into five volumes. Dioscorides organized the substances by certain similarities, such as their being aromatic, or vines; these divisions do not correspond to any modern classification. In David Sutton's view the grouping is by the type of effect on the human body.

Volume I: Aromatics

Volume I covers aromatic oils, the plants that provide them, and ointments made from them. They include what are probably cardamom, nard, valerian, cassia or senna, cinnamon, balm of Gilead, hops, mastic, turpentine, pine resin, bitumen, heather, quince, apple, peach, apricot, lemon, pear, medlar, plum and many others.

Volume II: Animals to herbs

Volume II covers an assortment of topics: animals including sea creatures such as sea urchin, seahorse, whelk, mussel, crab, scorpion, electric ray, viper, cuttlefish and many others; dairy produce; cereals; vegetables such as sea kale, beetroot, asparagus; and sharp herbs such as garlic, leek, onion, caper and mustard.

Volume III: Roots, seeds and herbs

Volume III covers roots, seeds and herbs. These include plants that may be rhubarb, gentian, liquorice, caraway, cumin

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