The ancient Greek physician and botanist Dioscorides, also known as Pedanius Dioscorides, is considered by many to be the father of pharmacology for his authoring of De Materia Medica (Περί Ύλης Ιατρικής in the original language of Greek) as well as a critical five-volume book, written between 65 and 70 AD and widely read for 1,500 years, on botany and pharmaceuticals.
The oldest and most famous copy of De Materia Medica is the Codex Vindobonensis, a Byzantine manuscript produced around the year 512 AD for Anicia Juliana, the daughter of Emperor Flavius Anicius Olybrius of the Western Roman Empire.
Dioscorides was born in the first century AD in Anazarbus, a town in northern Cilicia (southeastern Asia Minor), and probably studied at nearby Tarsus, which was then renown for the study of pharmacology. The ancient Greek pharmacologist described himself as an avid traveler who had visited mainland Greece, Crete, Egypt, and Petra among other places. In his travels, he observed plants in their native habitats and gained practical experience on the medicinal uses of herbs. He also studied substances derived from animals and minerals.
Careful observation of plants in their habitat
After his close observation of plants, animals, and minerals, he tested the derived substances and wrote De Materia Medica “on the preparation, properties, and testing of drugs.” The ancient Greek father of pharmacology dedicated each chapter to a single substance, its description, preparation, and therapeutic properties.
In his book, Dioscorides classified the drugs according to their individual properties instead of organizing them alphabetically. The idea was to organize them by category or class followed by the physiological effect of the drug on the body. The original manuscript was translated into several languages.
In the 10th century, during the rule of Abd al-Rahman III (891-961), the caliph of Cordova, the book was translated into Arabic. In 1518 at the Escuela de Traductores de Toledo (the School of Translators of Toledo), Antonio de Nebrija completed the first translation of the work in Spain into Latin. In 1555 in the city of Antwerp (present-day Belgium, then ruled by Spain), the publisher Juan Lacio (c. 1524 – 1566) published a Spanish translation from Latin, which was completed by Andrés Laguna, the doctor of Pope Julius III. The physician traveled frequently to Rome and consulted a variety of codices as well as the books on medicinal plants produced in Venice by the herbalist Pietro Andrea Matthioli.
Later copyists who could not understand the way the book was organized, alphabetized the material and unfortunately made the content rather obscure. Nevertheless, De Materia Medica was the basis for texts on pharmaceuticals and herbs until the end of the 16th century, when it was transmitted in large part by the voluminous commentaries of the Italian physician Pier Andrea Mattioli.
The most famous copy of De Materia Medica
The most famous copy of the book by the ancient Greek father of pharmacology, the deluxe Codex Vindobonensis, is a parchment composed of 491 folios (or almost a thousand pages) and some four hundred color illustrations, each occupying a full page opposite a description of the plant’s pharmacological properties.
There have been several changes from the original, as the chapter entries of De Materia Medica have been rearranged and the plants are listed in alphabetical order. Furthermore, observations of Galen and Crateuas have been added. Five supplemental texts were also appended, including paraphrases of the Theriaca and Alexipharmaca of Nicander as well as the Ornithiaca of Dionysius of Philadelphia, which describes almost fifty Mediterranean birds, including one sea bird.
As the highly valuable copy changed ownership, the manuscript was amended with the names of plants in Greek, Arabic, Ottoman, and Hebrew. There is even an annotation in French, presumably added after the sack of Constantinople in 1204 during the Fourth Crusade. Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, the ambassador of Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I to the Ottoman court of Süleyman, attempted to purchase the codex in 1562 but could not provide the asking price.
In 1569, Emperor Maximilian II did acquire the Codex Vindobonensis and placed it in the imperial library of Vienna, now the Austrian National Library (Österreichische Nationalbibliothek), with the index name Codex Vindobonensis Med. Gr. 1. (from Vindobona, the Latin name for Vienna) or, more simply, the Vienna Dioscorides.
The only English translation of the book by the ancient Greek father of pharmacology was produced in 1655, but it was not published until 1934, when Robert T. Gunther edited the manuscript. Gunther found that, in many cases, the plants described were not the same as those depicted.
The legacy of Dioscorides
For centuries, De Materia Medica, was received as a text of great merit. Progress in science and medicine and novel discoveries over the years, however, have made the book sound more like a work of curiosity rather than one of utility. Yet it serves as a document of the progression of medicine. His treatise consists of a description of the sum of all articles then used in medicine, with an account of their supposed virtues until the 16th century.
The significance which was for so long attached to the works of Dioscorides later rendered them the subject of almost innumerable commentaries and criticisms. Modern naturalists have found it a worthy task to illustrate his text. Overall, modern physicians and botanists attribute to him the meticulous research and his dedication to his project during a time when science was still in its initial more primitive stages.
Dioscorides’ work has been compared to that of Theophrastus, though he was actually a botanist, while the latter was merely an herbalist. The ancient writers who succeeded Dioscorides and contributed to De Materia Medica were generally content in quoting his authority while refraining from correcting his errors or writing of his deficiencies.
Aside from his celebrated treatise on pharmaceuticals, the following works are generally attributed to the ancient Greek father of pharmacology as well: On Poisonous Pharmaceuticals, De Venenis (Περὶ Δηλητηρίων Φαρμάκων); On Poisonous Serpents, De Venenatis Animalibus (Περὶ Ἰοβόλων); On Obtainable Simple and Composite Medicine (Περὶ Ευπορίστων Ἁπλῶν τε καὶ Συνθέτων Φαρμάκων); and a few other less well-known works.
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