The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001-07.
Dioscorides, Pedanius
(pdn´s dskôr´dz) (KEY) , fl. 1st cent. A.D., Greek physician of Anazarbus, Cilicia. While traveling as a surgeon in the Roman army, he collected information on the remedies of the period and wrote a work on materia medica (tr. The Greek Herbal of Dioscorides, 1934, repr. 1959) that remained standard for centuries.