152 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54 



Though in relation to this author biographic dates fail us, 

 the land of his nativity does not. It is well established that 

 he was a Cilician Greek, his native city being Anazarbos; for in 

 order to distinguish between him and others named Dioscorides, 

 eminent writers referred to him as Dioscorides Anazarbaeus, the 

 Anazarbean Dioscorides. It is clear also from his own writings 

 that he was a learned physician and practised medicine; also that 

 he had travelled widely to study plants, and obtain knowledge 

 of other than vegetal remedial agents. In these travels he came 

 to know many plants before unknown to Greek and Roman physi- 

 cians, and was at the pains of describing many such; that is, of 

 indicating not only their qualities and remedial effects, but also 

 something of their aspects and morphology as living plants ; describ- 

 ing their roots, stems, foliage, and even sometimes their flowers; 

 and the number of plants and plant products of which he gives 

 account is about 600. Such a list of merely medicinal and alimentary 

 plants is by more than 100 greater than the sum of all plants 

 known to Theophrastus three centuries before Dioscorides. And 

 it 'was because he had described so many, and often so well, that 

 in after ages he came to be regarded as the supreme botanist. 

 The usefulness of his medical botany, from the phytographic point 

 of view, was not only fully realized, but also enthusiastically 

 somewhat overestimated. The scientific botanist among the 

 Greeks was Theophrastus ; and there is no comparison between him 

 and Dioscorides, whose theme was medical botany; but, quite as 

 usual, the man of "applied science" was the one to meet with 

 general appreciation and approval. 



So highly esteemed was Dioscorides during the middle ages, that 

 early after the invention of printing, his work, though in Greek, 

 obtained an editor and a publisher at Venice as early as the year 

 1499.^ This edition must have obtained a ready sale, for in 1518 

 it was repeated. A third Greek edition appeared at Basle in 1529.2 



Latin being the universal language of the schools, Latin versions 

 of Dioscorides were in demand, and early became rather numerous. 

 The very first of these, a book rare and obscure, purports to bear the 

 date 1478,^ thus antedating the first Greek prints. But from the 

 year 15 16, when the first excellent translation by Ruellius appeared, 

 Latin versions became numerous ; and for a whole century thereafter 

 the most voluminous and most useful books of botany were in the 



' See Pritzel, Thesaurus, 2d ed., p. 84. 



' Ibid. 



^ Said to bear the name of Petrus Paduanensis; see Pritzel, 2d ed., p. 85. 



