On Medical Matters

That he was a military physician and served during the reign of Claudius is especially evident from the fact that he explains in his preface that he lived a military life. It is certain that he traveled through Italy, even from the testimony he provides (book 2, c. 75) concerning the effects of medicated milk which he observed in the Vestine mountains. He seems to have visited Gaul, the Spains, both Tarraconensis and Baetica, and he did not neglect Africa itself, as he adds Punic names for plants and skillfully indicates their place of origin. However, I do not recall that Britain, which Julius Agricola opened up, or Germany, whose nations were more triumphant than conquered up to the time of Tacitus, were ever mentioned by Dioscorides.

V.

In the age of Dioscorides, the schools of medicine were divided mainly into two parts: one professing rational discipline, the other placing the art solely in practice and experience. The former arrogated to itself the honorable title of Dogmatic, the latter was called Empiric. Included among the Dogmatics were those who, following Erasistratus, considered it their highest duty to examine the viscera of the body and to dispute the natural character and powers of the body and the hidden causes of diseases. Nor were they strangers to those who spent almost their entire lives in correcting and explaining the writings of Hippocrates and the ancients, as was the custom in Alexandria. During the age of Dioscorides, a sect was added which, founded by Athenaeus, our fellow countryman, was called Pneumatic, since it posited that functions originate from the powers of pneuma spirit/breath, and diseases from its disorders. Finally, the Asclepiadeans followed a middle path between the Dogmatic and Empiric sects, led by Asclepiades the Bithynian, and were later also called Methodists.

If anyone reads the commentaries of Dioscorides attentively, he must perceive that he did not privately devote himself to any of those sects, but from each, he adopted what seemed to him to correspond to reason. Whence, with Agathinus of Sparta and Leonidas of Alexandria, he is to be numbered among the Episynthetics or, rather, the Eclectics. That he placed greater faith in experience than in reasoning is clear even from the chapter on opium 24, where, having reviewed the opinions of Diagoras, Andreas, and Mnesidemus, he asserts that all these are fictitious and must be detected through experience. Nevertheless, he none the less adopted at least the manner of speaking used in the schools of the Methodists, and perhaps even adhered to their concepts. For he recommends metasyncritic restorative or transformative treatment here and there 25, and reasons about pores being filled and opened again 26. That he was a rational physician, however, there can be no doubt, although he was not so devoted to the reasoning of the Dogmatics as to assume or imitate their futile quibbles about the degrees of powers residing in medicines.

He kept himself immune and untouched by the superstition that had already begun to creep through the common people and the schools in that age. If he ever hands down such efficacies of medicines, intending to follow the testimonies of others, he is accustomed to add: historousi they report, historeitai it is reported. Hence, most additions by scribes are immediately detected, as they are similar to either superstitious concepts or old wives' tales.