Pietro Andrea Mattioli

Pietro Andrea Mattioli (1501–1577).
Commentarii in libros sex Pedacii Dioscoridis Anazarbei, de medica materia.
Venice: Vincenzo Valgrisi, 1554. (BRC0005)

Mattioli completed his medical studies at Padua in 1523. His active career included practices in Siena, Perugia, Rome, Trent, and Gorizio, and service as the personal physician to Ferdinand I and Maximilian II. He wrote on various medical topics, including syphilis, the practice of medicine, and therapeutic practices, but his most well-known work was this commentary on Dioscorides’s De materia medica. As a medical practitioner, Mattioli was extremely interested in the botanical sources for pharmaceuticals. First published in Italian in 1544, this 1554 Latin revision and enlargement was the earliest edition to include information on plants from the Americas, Asia, and Africa. In the Sellers copy, several of the woodcut illustrations have been annotated in French in a later hand.

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History of Medicine
Pietro Andrea Mattioli