Dioscorides Pedanius

Dioscorides Pedanius (fl. first century CE).
[Euporista, (in Greek)] ad Andromachum, hoc est de curationibus morborum per medicamenta paratu facilia, libri ii.
Strassburg: Josias Rihel, 1565. (BRA0853)

Dioscorides was born in Anazarbus, Turkey, and served as a botanist in Emperor Nero’s widely-travelled army. His De materia medica was the most authoritative and influential botanical and pharmacological text prior to the work of the eighteenth-century Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus. The Euporista, a compilation of simple remedies, appears here in its first Latin translation, edited by Johannes Moibanus and Conrad Gessner.

This book is equally notable for its fine contemporary pigskin binding, stamped with panels portraying Emperor Charles V and Johann Friedrich I, Duke of Saxony, signed "A.R." and dated 1572 for the patron "B.O.H." The binder was presumably August Rinkfeld, a prominent member of the Wittenberg binders' guild until his death in 1598.