Pedanius Dioscorides

Pedanius Dioscorides was a Greek botanist, pharmacologist, and physician. He studied herbal remedies of plants.

He was native to Anazarbus, Cilicia, Anatolia, but studied in Rome in the time of Nero. He was a surgeon with the emperor's army, giving him the opportunity to travel extensively, seeking medicinal substances such as plants and minerals from all over the Greek and Roman world.

De Materia Medica
Dioscorides wrote a five-volume encyclopedia about herbal medicines in his native language, Greek as Περὶ ὕλης ἰατρικής, known in English by its original Latin title, De Materia Medica, which literally means, "Regarding Medical Materials". It remained used until about CE 1600. Unlike many classical authors, Dioscorides' works were not "rediscovered" during the Renaissance, because his book never left circulation. During the medieval age, De Materia Medica was circulated in Latin, Greek, and Arabic. While being produced in manuscripts for centuries, it was often supplemented with commentary on Dioscorides' work, with some additions from Arabic and Indian sources. Some of the most important manuscripts of De Materia Medica are found today in monasteries in Mount Athos. The most famous of these is the Vienna Dioscurides, which was produced in Constantinople in 512/513 AD. Some heavily illustrated Arabic copies survive from the 12th and 13th centuries.

De Materia Medica is the main historical source of information about medicines used by the Greeks, Romans, and other antiquated cultures. It also includes records of Dacian and Thracian names for some plants, which would have otherwise been lost. De Materia Medica presents about 600 plants, though the descriptions are sometimes obscurely phrased. "Numerous individuals from the Middle Ages on have struggled with the identity of the recondite kinds" and some other botanical descriptions in De Materia Medica remain insecure guesses by today's experts.