The Oldest Recorded Materia Medica (Medical Handbook)....Do You Want to Know Its Secrets?
The Materia Medica....
Physicians of the past, also typically known as professionally trained herbalists of the past, always made and carried their very own.
A latin term defined as "substances used in the composition of medical remedies" (Merriam-Webster Dictionary, 2024)
Traditionally, and for most of recorded medical history, a Materia Medica included a thorough description of plant materials, animal materials, and mineral materials, as well as their medicinal properties and uses in provoking the body into some kind of healing reaction. A traditional Materia Medica included monographs of certain whole plants, or other natural materials, their thorough descriptions according to many preceding Materia Medicas, as well as an herbalist's personal experience and continued educational findings for each monographic material.
Most physicians today don't create or carry their own Materia Medicas because that's simply not part of their training. Instead they collect manuals and documents created by pharmaceutical companies for their own personal research, as well as keep records of particular drug reactions on an individual-only client basis. Like the Materia Medica, pharmaceutical manuals, also include descriptions of medicines except the difference is that they're based on pharmaceutically patented drugs, their uses, recommended dosages, as well as references to their respective pharmaceutical studies, instead of whole plant, animal, and mineral materials.
Herbalists, no longer assumed to be physicians unless otherwise educated as medical doctors, continue the tradition, however.
And thankfully, or so I think as an herbalist myself, ancient herbal (medicinal) knowledge is still readily available to us all thanks to this very tradition.
Today I'm sharing with you one of the oldest recorded Materia Medica's known to be available. You might even call him the Grandfather of the Materia Medica.
It's called, shockingly enough, "De Matetria Medica" and is written by a great historical Greek physician known as Dioscorides over 2000 years ago. A physician who traveled the world, became familiar with the various plants and properties of each region, recorded them, and treated those ill along the way with the materials available and based on his recordings.
You can buy a reprint of the book from certain small publishers for $100-$350 or more, or, you can get it right here for free.
History buffs, physicians, herbalists, and those simply curious about the remedies of our ancient past, enjoy.
Dioscorides Materia Medica
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STUDIES & RESOURCES:
(The studies below are nowhere near an exhaustive list. Always continue your own research and read the papers within each paper below.)
2) A Brief History of Materia Medica
3) A brief history of Western medicine
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