Dioscorides on Pharmacy and Medicine Riddle John M. Paperback
For 1,600 years Dioscorides (ca. ad 40-80) was regarded as the foremost authority on drugs. He knew mild laxatives and strong purgatives, analgesics for headaches, antiseptics for wounds, emetics to…
Specifikacia Dioscorides on Pharmacy and Medicine Riddle John M. Paperback
For 1,600 years Dioscorides (ca. ad 40-80) was regarded as the foremost authority on drugs. He knew mild laxatives and strong purgatives, analgesics for headaches, antiseptics for wounds, emetics to rid one of ingested poisons, chemotherapy agents for cancer treatments, and even oral contraceptives. Why, then, have his works remained obscure in recent centuries? Because of one small oversight (Dioscorides himself thought it was self-evident): he failed to describe his method for organizing drugs by their affinities. This omission led medical authorities to use his materials as a guide to pharmacy while overlooking Dioscorides' most valuable contribution--his empirically derived method for observing and classifying drugs by clinical testing. Dioscorides' De materia medica, a five-volume work, was written in the first century. Here revealed for the first time is the thesis that