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MEDICAL TEACHING IN ROME. 107
The Work of DiOSKORiDES was highly valued by GALEN,
who appeals to it on various occasions, and formed throughout
the middle ages even to late times the most valuable
handbook of materia medica. It certainly served in no
small degree to arouse and maintain consideration for
botanical and pharmacological studies. "The doctor
should be acquainted with all plants or at least with the
majority and those most used" writes GALEN. "The
species, or if it is preferred the different sorts are:
trees, bushes, herbs, thorns and shrubs. Whoever is able
to distinguish them from their very young state until their
full growth will find them in many parts of the world.
Thus I myself have found plants in various districts of
Italy which those who had only seen them in the dry state
were unable to recognize either during their growth or
afterwards. Every vendor of salves knows the plants and
fruits Avhich are brought here from Crete; but not one
knows that many of them grow in the neighbourhood of
Rome. Therefore no one thinks of looking for them when
the time of their ripening has arrived."* He declares
thereupon that he is informed upon this point and does hot ,
neglect to gather the plants at the right time before they
have been dried up by the heat of the sun and the fruit is
over-ripe. In another place he remarks f that it is impossible
to learn botany from books—of which many were
provided with drawings J—but only by hunting for and
observing the plants under the direction of a teacher.
" This method of teaching" he adds "applies not only to
the case of plants but to all specimens of materia medica in
general."
The doctors were compelled to pay great attention
to this subject, as they were obliged to prepare the
medicines themselves. To be sure, some preferred for
convenience to buy not the raw material but the medicines
already made up at the druggists who kept at their stores
* GALEN xiv, 30.—MEYER op. cit. S. \qv. f GALEN xi, 797.
X PLINIUS: Hist. nat. xxv, 8.
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