Flourishing 50-70 C.E.
Medical Writer

Early Pharmacist. Born in Cilicia, Dioscorides studied in Tarsus under Areius and subsequently traveled extensively while gathering information about drugs. A Byzantine report that he was a physician in Nero's army is erroneous. From places he identified in his work, it can be postulated that he visited extensively in Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt and he frequented major libraries where he researched on writers on pharmacy and medicine. Likely that research included studies at the library at Alexandria. His work is dated by the latest authority whom he cited and the fact that Pliny, who was writing about the same time, did not know Dioscorides' work.

Sources:

John M. Riddle, Dioscorides on Pharmacy and Medicine (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985).

M. M. Sadek, The Arabic materia medica of Dioscorides (Quebec: Les Editions du sphinx, 1983).