On Medical Matters

VII.

Concerning the distinction between genuine and spurious books.

The five books on materia medica medical materials must be considered genuine.

**A. Concerning antidotes and theriacs. **

As for the sixth, seventh, and eighth books—and even the ninth for some—which editions add concerning theriacs antidote compounds and alexipharmaca poisons/antidotes, they seem to be attributable to an author different from ours. For:

1. He enumerates various medicines, either unknown to the Anazarbean referring to Dioscorides, from Anazarbus, or at least not mentioned by him. Here pertains opocarpason juice of fruit, of which, if I am not mistaken, Archigenes is the first to make mention; then also cactos and strychnon manikon mad-nightshade or dorycnion, even though the Anazarbean distinguishes between the two.

2. That he was a follower of Erasistratus is clear from several places; for he strives to defend his doctrine against the Methodics and Empirics, and calls upon him as a witness. But since later Pneumatics medical sect focusing on the "spirit", under the leadership of Athenaeus, made the doctrine of Erasistratus concerning the pneuma their own, our author clearly (Theriacs, ch. 19) explains the action of certain remedies against poisons from the force of the indwelling spirit. Added to this are many dialectical subtleties, with which the preface to the theriacs abounds, and the obscure diction of that same preface, which abundantly prove that this author is to be counted among the Pneumatic sect, inasmuch as they fell into the criticism of Galen due to their highly subtle questions and abstruse diction.

3. It is probable that he lived in Alexandria, since he shifts his advice to the customs of the Egyptians (Theriacs, ch. 19). Therefore, I would not dare to oppose anyone who might wish to consider him the same author of the alexipharmaca and theriacs as the younger Dioscorides of Alexandria.

28) Galen, On the composition of remedies according to location, book 1, p. 445.
29) Galen, On the differences of the pulse, book 3, p. 638.