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106 ANCIENT TIMES.
only possible nearly two thousand years later to understand
their full significance.
In the time of GALEN the doctors felt but small
interest in the problems of physiology. Practical medicine
claimed their chief attention. The art of healing
was thought more highly of by them than the science
of man—and was also more profitable. Their aims in
this direction led to a diligent study of materia medica..
Numerous collections of recipes in verse and prose, and
lists of drugs give expression to these efforts in .their '
literature. The pharmacological writings of PHILO of
Tarsus, of SCRIBONIUS LARGUS, of SEXTIUS NIGER, of
MENEKRATES, of ANDROMACHUS, of DAMOKRATES, are
among the most prominent examples, but above all is the
work of PEDANIUS DiOSKORiDES of Anazarba in Cicilia
who had become acquainted with a great part of the Roman ,|
Empire as a military doctor and from youth had looked
•J\upon the study of therapeutic agents as his life's work*
h -/ He subjected to a systematic review, distinguished by its
yl completeness, all the medicinal agents known at that time
in the three kingdoms of Nature. In his work the various 1
"'" names are given by which they were known in different
' countries, their native countries mentioned, the way to find
>;,(them or to prepare them artificially described, and their
• therapeutic action explained. This book is therefore a
very important one not only for medical science but also
for comparative philology and especially for botany.
DiOSKORiDES has described therein about 500 plants and
so accurately as to render the determination of the majority
of them possible. E. MEYER has characterized his services
in this department by the words: " What THEOPHRASTUS
is to us in the general botany of the ancients, that is
DiOSKORiDES to us in their special botany—the fountainhead,
worth more alone than all the rest put together."!
* PEDANII DIOSCOIUDIS materia medica, ed. CURT. SPRENGEL, Lips. 1829,
T. i, p. 4.
t E. MEYER : Geschichte der Botanik, Konigsberg 1885, Bd. ii, S. 117.
i