De materia medica
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De materia medica is a pharmacopoeia of medicinal plants and the medicines that can be obtained from them. The five-volume work was written between 50 and 70 CE by Pedanius Dioscorides, a Greek physic
Cover of an early printed version, Lyon, 1554
Dioscorides receives a mandrake root. Vienna Dioscurides manuscript, early 6th century.
Blackberry. Vienna Dioscurides, early 6th century
Mandrake (written 'ΜΑΝΔΡΑΓΟΡΑ' in Greek capitals). Naples Dioscurides, 7th century.
Vienna Dioscurides
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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 by Pedanius Dioscorides in uncial
De materia medica
…and eventually supplanting the classical text. Several manuscripts and early printed versions of De materia medica survive, including the illustrated Vienna Dioscurides manuscript written in the original Greek in 6th-century Constantinople; it was used there by the Byzantines as a hospital text for just over a thousand…
A gallery of birds from folio 483v of the Vienna Dioscorides
Portrait of Anicia Juliana, for whom the book was made, flanked by Megalopsychia and Phronesis (detail from folio 6v)
Folio 3v, seven physicians