Pedanio (or Pedacio) Anazarbeo Dioscorides (Anazarbus, Cilicia, in Asia Minor, c 40 -.. C 90) was a physician, pharmacologist and botanist of ancient Greece, whose work De Materia Medica reached widely and became the main manual pharmacopoeia throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. He practiced medicine in Rome in the time of Emperor Nero. According own testimony contained in the letter that serves as a prologue to his work, was a military surgeon in the Roman army, which had the opportunity to travel in search of medicinal substances throughout the known world.