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Greece / Austria: Author Picture of the Greek physician Dioscorides Pedanios from the medieval manuscript Medicina Antiqua in the Austrian National Library

Greece / Austria: Author Picture of the Greek physician Dioscorides Pedanios from the medieval manuscript Medicina Antiqua in the Austrian National Library

Pedanius Dioscorides (Greek: Πεδάνιος Διοσκουρίδης; circa 40—90 AD) was a Greek physician, pharmacologist and botanist, the author of a 5-volume encyclopedia about herbal medicine and related medicinal substances (a pharmacopeia), that was widely read for well more than a thousand years.

A native of Anazarbus, Cilicia, Asia Minor, Dioscorides practiced in Rome at the time of Nero. He was a surgeon with the army of the emperor, so he had the opportunity to travel extensively, seeking medicinal substances (plants and minerals) from all over the Roman and Greek world.

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