DIOSCO'RIDES, PEDA'CIUS. or PEDA'NIUS, a Greek writer on materia medica, was born at Anazarbus, in Cilicia, and flourished in the reign of Nero, as appears from the dedication of his books to Arens Asciepiadeus, who was a friend of the consul Licinius or Lecanius Bassus. In early life he seems to have been attached to the army ; and either at that time or subsequently he travelled through Greece, Italy, Asia Minor, and some parts of Gaul, collecting plants with diligence and acquainting himself with their properties, real or reputed. He also gathered together the opinions current in his day concerning the medical plaists brought from countries not visited by himself, especially from India, which at that time furnished many drugs to the western markets. From such materials he compiled his celebrated work on 'Materia Medics,' in five books, wherein between 500 and 600 medicinal plants are named and briefly described. He is moreover reputed the author of some additional books on therapeutics, &c.; but in the judgment of Sprengel the latter aro spurious, and, from the mixture of Latin and Greek names of plants, are probably some monkish forgery.
Few books have ever enjoyed such long and universal celebrity as the 'Materia Medics' of Dioscorides. For sixteen centuries and more, to use the words of one of his biographers, this work was referred to as the fountain-head of all authority by everybody who studied either botany or the mere virtues of plants. Up to the commencement of the 17th century the whole of academical or private study in such subjects was begun and ended with the works of Dioscorides; and it was only when the rapidly increasing numbers of new planis and the general advance in all branches of physical knowledge compelled people to admit that the vegetable kingdom might contain more things than were dreamt of by the Anazsrbian philosopher, that his authority ceased to be acknowledged.
This is the more surprising, considering the real nature of these famous books. The author introduced no order into the arraugement of his matter, unless by consulting a similarity of sound in the names he gave his plants. Thus, medium was placed with epimediurn, ethos cannabina with cannabis, hippophtestum (cuicus stellatus) with hippophad, and so on ; the mere separation of aromatie and gum bearing trees, esculeute and corn-plants, hardly forms an exception to this statement. Of many of his plants no description is giveu, but
they are merely designated by a name. In others the descriptions are comparative, contradictory, or unintelligible. He employs the same word in different senses, and evidently attached no exactness to the terms he made use of. He described the same plant twice under the same name or different names ; he was often exceedingly careless, and he appears to have been ready to state too much upon the authority of others. Nevertheless, his writings are extremely interesting as showing the amount of materia medics knowledge in the author's day, and his descriptions are iu many cases far from bad ; but wo must be careful not to look upon them as evidence of the state of botany at the same period, for Dioscorides has no pretension to be ranked among the botanists of antiquity, considering that the writings of Theo phrastus, four centuries earlier, show that botany had even at that time begun to be cultivated as a science distinct from the art of the herbalist.
The most celebrated manuscript of Dioscorides is one at Vienna, illuminated with rude figures. It was sent by Busbequius, the Austrian ambassador at Constantinople, to Mathiolus, who quotes it under the name of the Cantacuzene Codex,' and is believed to have been written in the 6th century. Copies of some of the figures were inserted by Dodoens in his Historia Stirpium,' and others were "engraved in the reign of the Empress Maria Theresa, under the inspection of Jacquin; two impressions only of these plates, as far as we can learn, have ever been taken off, as the work was not prosecuted." One of them is now in the Library of the Linnwan Society ; the other Is we believe, with Sibtborp's collection at Oxford. They are of little importance, as the figures are of the rudest imaginable description. Another manuscript of the 9th century exists at Paris, and was used by Salmasius; this also is illustrated with figures, and has both Arabic and Coptio names introduced, on which account it is supposed to havo been written in Egypt. Besides these, there is at Vienna a manuscript believed to be still more ancient than that first mentioned, and three others are preserved at Leyden.