Materia medica

right|thumb|Page from the 6th-century [[Vienna Dioscurides, an illuminated version of the 1st-century De Materia Medica]]

Materia medica (lit.: 'medical material/substance') is a Latin term from the history of pharmacy for the body of collected knowledge about the therapeutic properties of any substance used for healing (i.e., medications). The term derives from the title of a work by the Ancient Greek physician Pedanius Dioscorides in the 1st century AD, , 'On medical material' (Περὶ ὕλης ἰατρικῆς, Peri hylēs iatrikēs, in Greek).

The term materia medica was used from the period of the Roman Empire until the 20th century, but has now been generally replaced in medical education contexts by the term pharmacology. The term survives in the title of the British Medical Journals "Materia Non Medica" column.

Ancient civilizations

Ancient Egypt

The earliest known writing about medicine was a 110-page Egyptian papyrus. It was supposedly written by the god Thoth in about 16 BC. The Ebers papyrus is an ancient recipe book dated to approximately 1552 BC. It contains a mixture of magic and medicine with invocations to banish disease and a catalogue of useful plants, minerals, magic amulets and spells. The most famous Egyptian physician was Imhotep, who lived in Memphis around 2500 B.C. Imhotep's materia medica consisted of procedures for treating head and torso injuries, tending of wounds, and prevention and curing of infections, as well as advanced principles of hygiene.

Ancient India

In India, the Ayurveda is traditional medicine that emphasizes plant-based treatments, hygiene, and balance in the body's state of being. Indian materia medica included knowledge of plants, where they grow in all season, methods for storage and shelf life of harvested materials. It also included directions for making juice from vegetables, dried powders from herb, cold infusions and extracts.

Ancient China

The earliest Chinese manual of materia medica, the Shennong Bencao Jing (Shennong Emperor's Classic of Materia Medica), was compiled in the 1st century AD during the Han dynasty, attributed to the mythical Shennong. It lists some 365 medicines, of which 252 are herbs. Earlier literature included lists of prescriptions for specific ailments, exemplified by the Recipes for Fifty-Two Ailments found in the Mawangdui tomb, which was sealed in 168 BC. Succeeding generations augmented the Shennong Bencao Jing, as in the Yaoxing Lun (Treatise on the Nature of Medicinal Herbs), a 7th-century Tang dynasty treatise on herbal medicine.

Ancient Greece

Hippocrates

In Greece, Hippocrates (born 460 BC) was a philosopher later known as the Father of Medicine. He founded a school of medicine that focused on treating the causes of disease rather than its symptoms. Disease was dictated by natural laws and therefore could be treated through close observation of symptoms. His treatises, Aphorisms and Prognostics, discuss 265 drugs, the importance of diet and external treatments for diseases.

Galen

Galen was a philosopher, physician, pharmacist and prolific medical writer. He compiled an extensive record of the medical knowledge of his day and added his own observations. He wrote on the structure of organs, but not their uses; the pulse and its association with respiration; the arteries and the movement of blood; and the uses of theriacs. "In treatises such as On Theriac to Piso, On Theriac to Pamphilius, and On Antidotes, Galen identified theriac as a sixty-four-ingredient compound, able to cure any ill known". His work was rediscovered in the 15th century and became the authority on medicine and healing for the next two centuries. His medicine was based on the regulation of the four humors (blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile) and their properties (wet, dry, hot, and cold).

Dioscorides's De materia medica

thumb|[[Dioscorides, De materia medica, Byzantium, 15th century.]]

thumb|Dioscorides De materia medica in [[Arabic, Spain, 12th-13th century]]

The Greek physician Pedanius Dioscorides, of Anazarbus in Asia Minor, wrote a five-volume treatise concerning medical matters, entitled Περὶ ὕλης ἰατρικῆς in Greek or De materia medica in Latin. This famous commentary covered about 600 plants along with therapeutically useful animal and mineral products. It documented the effects of drugs made from these substances on patients. De materia medica was the first extensive pharmacopeia, including about a thousand natural product drugs (mostly plant-based), 4,740 medicinal usages for drugs, and 360 medical properties (such as antiseptic, anti-inflammatory, stimulant). The book was heavily translated, and portrayed some of the emblematic actions of physicians and herbalists. One such page is Physician Preparing an Elixir.

Dioscorides' plant descriptions use an elementary classification, though he cannot be said to have used botanical taxonomy. Book one describes the uses for aromatic oils, salves and ointments, trees and shrubs, and fleshy fruits, even if not aromatic. Book two included uses for animals, parts of animals, animal products, cereals, leguminous, malvaceous, cruciferous, and other garden herbs. Book three detailed the properties of roots, juices, herbs and seeds used for food or medicine. Book four continued to describe the uses for roots and herbs, specifically narcotic and poisonous medicinal plants. Book five dealt with the medicinal uses for wine and metallic ores. It is a precursor to all modern pharmacopeias, and is considered one of the most influential herbal books in history. It remained in use until about 1600 AD.

Medieval

Middle Eastern

Avicenna (980–1037 AD) was a Persian philosopher, physician, and Islamic scholar. He wrote about 40 books on medicine. His two most famous books are The Canon of Medicine and The Book of Healing, used in medieval universities as medical textbooks. He did much to popularize the connection between Greek and Arabic medicine, translating works by Hippocrates, Aristotle and Galen into Arabic. Avicenna stressed the importance of diet, exercise, and hygiene. He also was the first to describe parasitic infection, to use urine for diagnostic purposes and discouraged physicians from the practice of surgery because it was too base and manual.

Early modern

Matthaeus Silvaticus, Avicenna, Galen, Dioscorides, Platearius and Serapio inspired the appearance of three main works printed in Mainz: In 1484 the Herbarius, the following year the Gart der Gesundheit, and in 1491 the Ortus Sanitatis. The works contain 16, 242 and 570 references to Dioscorides, respectively. Barbaro was professor of the University of Padua in 1477 and translated many texts from Greek to Latin.

He sought to avoid mistakes by gathering as many manuscripts as he could for checking the texts. He claimed to have corrected 5000 mistakes between two editions of Pliny the Elder's Naturalis historia, a work he found very similar to Materia Medica, for which he used at least two editions as well.

The result of Barbaro's effort occupied no fewer than 58 pages printed in three columns of about 50 entries each. The work provides a key to over 9,000 items; all references were to pages. This was the first annotated Latin translation of Dioscorides' Materia Medica, and so Barbaro became the earliest of the Renaissance translators of Dioscorides, a practice that saw its golden age in the 16th century. Barbaro's work was later corrected by Giovanni-Battista.

Jean Ruel

Jean Ruel was the dean of the Faculty of Medicine and physician to King Francis I of France. He perfected the Latin translation of the Materia Medica directly from the "princeps" edition. He tried to develop a translation joining philology, botany and medicine. This work, printed in 1516 by Henri Estienne/Stephano, became very popular, having 20 editions during the 16th century. He published editions until 1537, printed by Simon de Colines.

Bruyerinus

Bruyerinus Champier was the nephew of Symphorien Champier, and physician of Henry II of France. He was an Arabist, and translated works of Avicena. In 1550 he published his first Materia Medica, printed by Balthazar Arnoullet in Lyons. This work had a second edition in 1552 printed by Arnoullet in Lyon and Vienne. Both works were illustrated with figures by Fuchs, but in this last edition there were also 30 woodcuts by the botanist and physician Jacob Dalechamp. It seems that the reason that he used his initials, H.B.P., and not his full name in the work; it could be that he practically transcribed commentaries of Mattioli.

Michael Servetus

According to Spanish scholar González Echeverría in several communications in the ISHM, the John M. Riddle Anonymous B (De Materia Medica of 1543) would be Michael Servetus, and that the Anonymous D (De Materia Medica of 1554 of Mattioli plus non-signed commentaries) is two commentarians, Servetus and Mattioi, being the last one hired for editing the "Lyons printers' Tribute to Michel de Villeneuve" edition.

Michael Servetus, using the name "Michel de Villeneuve", who already had his first death sentence from the University of Paris, anonymously published a Dioscorides-De Materia Medica in 1543, printed by Jean & Francois Frellon in Lyon. It has 277 marginalia and 20 commentaries on a De Materia Medica of Jean Ruel.

upright|thumb|One of the four covers (Arnoullet) of the "[[Lyons printers' tribute edition to Michel de Villeneuve" into Italian in 1544 and ten years later published a work in Latin with all the plants of Dioscorides and 562 woodcut illustrations. printed by Guillaume Rouillé in Lyons. Laguna was the first to translate De Materia Medica into Castilian. This was not an illustrated work. In 1555 he re-edited this work with woodcuts. a fact that could have made them limit their commentaries to avoid risks. Nevertheless, he was the physician of Charles V and the Pope Julius III,

Valerius Cordus

The physician Valerius Cordus, son of the famous botanist Euricius Cordus, went through many woods and mountains discovering hundreds of new herbs. He gave lectures on Dioscorides at the University of Wittenberg, which experts from the university attended. Cordus had no intention of publishing his work. Five years after his death, a Materia Medica with commentaries was published. It contained the index of the Botanologicon, the outstanding work of his father Euricius, who developed a scientific classification of the plants. The following pages are on Gesner's Nomenclature, relating the different synonyms used for referring to the same plants of the Dioscorides work.

The abstracts of the lectures of Valerius Cordus go from page 449 to 553 as commentaries. This section consisted of a very refined explanation of Dioscorides' teachings with more specifics on the variety of plants and habitats, and corrections of errors. Cordus refers to both his and his father's observations. Eucharius Rösslin's herbal illustrations are prominent in this work, followed by 200 of Fuchs. This work and the model of botanical description and, many consider it the boldest innovation that was made by any botanist of the 16th century.

Martin Mathee

The French physician Martin Mathee published in 1553 the French translation of De Materia Medica, printed by Balthazar Arnoullet, in Lyons. This granted much more access for the students of medicine to the teachings.

References

External links

Michael Servetus Research – website with graphical study on the two Materia Medica, and the Manuscript of the Complutense by Servetus
Complete editions of several Materia Medica of William Boericke, B. Mure, James Tyler Kent, John Henry Clarke, Henry C. Allen, Cyrus Maxwell Boger, Adolf zur Lippe
Guide to Materia Medica circa 1830 at the University of Chicago Special Collections Research Center