Dioscorides was a native of Anazarbus in Cilicia, a province where the Greek spoken and written was proverbially provincial. Our word solecism is believed to have been derived from the town of Soloe in the same district. The Greek of Dioscorides is alleged to have been far from classical. He himself apologises for it in his preface, and Galen remarks upon it. Nevertheless Dioscorides maintained for at least sixteen centuries the premier position among authorities on materia medica. Galen complains that he was sometimes too indefinite in his description of plants, that he does not indicate exactly enough the diseases in which they are useful, and that he does not explain the degrees of heat, cold, dryness, and humidity which characterise them. He will often content himself with saying that a herb is hot or cold, as the case may be. As an illustration of one of his other criticisms Galen mentions the Polygonum, of which he notes that Dioscorides says “it is useful for those who urinate with difficulty.” But Galen adds that he does not particularise precisely the cases of which this is a symptom and which the Polygonum is good for. But these defects notwithstanding, Galen recognises that Dioscorides is the best authority on the subject of the materials of medicine. It is generally stated that Dioscorides was a physician; but of this there is no certain evidence. According to his own account he was devoted to the study and observation of plants and medical substances generally, and in order to see them in their native lands he accompanied the Roman armies through Greece, Italy, and Asia Minor. This was the easiest method of visiting foreign countries in those days. It is not unlikely that he went as assistant to a physician, perhaps to the one to whom he dedicated his book. That is to say, he may have been an army compounder. Suidas says of him that he was nicknamed Phocas, because his face was covered with stains of the shape of lentils. In his treatise on materia medica, “Peri Ules Iatrikes,” or, according to Photius, originally “Peri Ules,” On Matter, only, he describes some six hundred plants, limiting himself to those which had or were supposed to have medicinal virtues. He mentions, besides, the therapeutic properties of many animal substances. Among these are roasted grasshoppers, for bladder disorders; the liver of an ass for epilepsy; seven bugs enclosed in the skin of a bean to be taken in intermittent fever; and a spider applied to the temples for headache. Dioscorides also gives a formula for the Sal Viperum, which was a noted remedy in his time and for long afterwards. His process was to roast a viper alive in a new earthen pot with some figs, common salt, and honey, reducing the whole to ashes. A little spikenard was added to the ashes. Pliny only adds fennel and frankincense to the viper, but Galen and later authors make the salt a much more complicated mixture.