Pedanius dioscorides biography of michael
Pedanius Dioscorides, of Anazarbos (fl.50-70)
De materia medica libri sex. Lugduni: Apud Gulielmum Rouillium, 1554. Fulltext online
- Pedanius Dioscorides, De materia medica libri sex. A printer’s ornament is the same as found in the Galen Aphorisms printed the same year.
- Pedanius Dioscorides. De materia medica libri sex. Historiated initial.
- Pedanius Dioscorides. De materia medica libri sex. Shown are the names of plants familiar to us today, Chrysanthemum and Ageratum.
A Greek surgeon who served in Nero’s army in the first century, Pedanius Dioscorides wrote an extensive guide to pharmacy and medical botany. Considered the classic text for 1500 years, it describes more than 600 plants and plant ingredients. Dioscorides included details of plant habitat and methods of growing and harvesting plants, as well as their medical usage and dosage. Even though opium had been used for centuries, Dioscorides was the first to describe its benefits and dangers. He also discussed mineral and animal products that were of medicinal value. His work identified plant families long before Linneaus’s classification system in the eighteenth century.
Our copy was translated by Pietro Mattioli of Siena, who studied medicine at the University of Padua and was physician to Holy Roman Emperors Ferdinand I and then Maximilian II. Mattioli wrote books on the practice of medicine, therapeutics, and syphilis, but this was his most popular work. Mattioli translated De materia into Italian in 1544 and provided the best botanical illustrations known at that time. Ours is a later, pocket-sized edition of the same text, but it does not have the fine illustrations of earlier editions.
next author: Galen (ca. 130-ca. 200).
Michael Servetus
16th-century Spanish theologian, physician, cartographer and Renaissance humanist
"Servetius" redirects here. Not to be confused with Servatius.
Michael Servetus | |
|---|---|
| Born | c. 1509-1511; possibly 29 September 1511 Villanueva de Sigena, Aragon, or Tudela, Navarre |
| Died | (1553-10-27)27 October 1553 (aged 42) Geneva, Republic of Geneva |
| Alma mater | University of Paris |
| Title | Theologian, physician, editor, translator |
| Theological work | |
| Era | Renaissance |
| Tradition or movement | Renaissance humanism |
| Main interests | Theology, medicine |
| Notable ideas | Nontrinitarian Christology, pulmonary circulation |
Michael Servetus (;Spanish: Miguel Servet; French: Michel Servet; also known as Michel Servetus, Miguel de Villanueva, Revés, or Michel de Villeneuve; 29 September 1509 or 1511 – 27 October 1553) was a Spanish theologian, physician, cartographer, and Renaissance humanist. He was the first European to correctly describe the function of pulmonary circulation, as discussed in Christianismi Restitutio (1553). He was a polymath versed in many sciences: mathematics, astronomy and meteorology, geography, human anatomy, medicine and pharmacology, as well as jurisprudence, translation, poetry, and the scholarly study of the Bible in its original languages.
He is renowned in the history of several of these fields, particularly medicine. His work on the circulation of blood and his observations on pulmonary circulation were particularly important. He participated in the Protestant Reformation, and later rejected the Trinity doctrine and mainstream CatholicChristology.
After being condemned by Catholic authorities in France, he fled to CalvinistGeneva where he was denounced by John Calvin himself and burned at the stake for heresy by order of the city's governing council.
Life
Early life and education
For a long time, it was held that Servetus was probably born[2] Book by Pedanius Dioscorides The Vienna Dioscurides or Vienna Dioscorides is an early 6th-century Byzantine Greek illuminated manuscript of an even earlier 1st century AD work, De materia medica (Ancient Greek: Περὶ ὕλης ἰατρικῆς, romanized: Perì hylēs iatrikēs) by Pedanius Dioscorides in uncial script. It is an important and rare example of a late antique scientific text. After residing in Constantinople for just over a thousand years, the text passed to the Holy Roman Emperor in Vienna in the 16th century, a century after the city fell to the Ottoman Empire. The 491 vellumfolios measure 37 cm (15 in) by 30 cm (12 in) and contain more than 400 pictures of animals and plants, most done in a naturalistic style. In addition to the text by Dioscorides, the manuscript has appended to it, the Carmen de herbis attributed to Rufus, a paraphrase of an ornithological treatise by a certain Dionysius, usually identified with Dionysius of Philadelphia, and a paraphrase of Nicander's treatise on the treatment of snake bites. The manuscript was created in about 515 AD in the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire's capital, Constantinople, for a resident Byzantine imperial princess, Anicia Juliana, the daughter of Anicius Olybrius (one of the last of the Western Roman Emperors). The manuscript is accordingly now called the Juliana Anicia Codex by scholars. Although it was created as a luxury copy, in later centuries it was used daily as a textbook in the imperial hospital of Constantinople, and a medieval note records that a Greek nurse there, named Nathanael, had it rebound in 1406. Throughout the Byzantine period the manuscript was used as the original for copies of the work that were given to foreign leaders, including the Arabic edition of Abd al-Rahman III of Spain for the creation of which the Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII sent a Greek copy and a translator.[3
De Materia Medica
I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn about the history of science; if you want to look at the pictures, check Andres de Laguna's 1555 colored manuscript Pedacio Dioscorides Anazarbeo Acerca de la materia medicinal y de los venenos mortiferos [... por el Doctor Andres de Laguna, Medico de Julio III Pont Max.] (in Spanish, available freely as high-quality digital scan, courtesy of Biblioteca Nacional de Espana) or Jean Ruel's 1552 manuscript Pedanii Dioscoridis Anazarbei, De medicinali materia libri sex (in Latin, available freely as high-quality digital scan, courtesy of the Biodiversity Heritage Library).
Reading this book is not coincidental, although I did find it while reading the excellent visual review of botanical illustrations Plant: Exploring the Botanical World. Pursuing this finding, I got to know that, alongside Pliny the Elder's encyclopedia of all knowledge Natural History and Theophrastus' investigation of plants Enquiry into Plants (Historia Plantaria in the early translation of Theodoros Gazis, who coincidentally appears in my mathematical genealogy), De Materia Medica would be one of the three books named as defining almost 2,000 years of botanical and medicinal knowledge by Linnaeus. I Vienna Dioscurides
History