Dioscorides of Anazarbus

Michael Lahanas

Διοσκουρίδης o Πεδάνιος

Dioscorides (or Dioscurides) of Anazarbus (today's Turkey) (Διοσκουρίδης o Πεδάνιος) was a Greek physician born in southeast Asia Minor in the Roman Empire in the first few decades AD. During his lifetime, he traveled extensively seeking medicinal substances from all over the Roman and Greek world. He served in Nero's armies as botanist. All we know from sources other than Dioscorides' own work is his name-Pedanius Dioscorides from Anazarbus. Greeks normally had only one name, but if one received Roman citizenship, he frequently added a Roman name, perhaps from a benefactor. Three candidates for Dioscorides' first-name benefactor are L. Pedanius Secundus, Roman prefect in AD. 56; Pedanius Secundus, who was likely governor of the Roman province of Asia in the early 50s; and Gn. Pedanius Salinator, consul in AD. 60. These possibilities are conjecture, however.

Between about 50-70 AD., he wrote his fundamental work, Περί ύλης ιατρικής , known in Latin as De materia medica. This five book study focused upon "the preparation, properties, and testing of drugs" and became the most central pharmacological work in Europe and the Middle East for the next sixteen centuries! This work is the first systematic pharmacopoeia. De materia medica was translated and preserved by the Arabs, and finally translated back into Latin by the 10th century.