Galbanum, storax, bitumen, are recommended for promoting suppuration, while pennyroyal, sulphur, pellitory, stavesacre, ox-gall, scammony, rue, and opium were all included in their medical recipes. Dioscorides was the first to attempt to record in anything like a methodical manner the many drugs and chemical substances used by the early Greeks. Pedacion Dioscorides, born in Anazaba in Cilicia, was a Greek physician, who lived in or about the second century. He gathered a great portion of his information on _materia medica_ during his travels with the Roman army, which he accompanied on several expeditions in the capacity of physician. Afterwards he wrote his great work _Peri Hules Iatrikes_ (about _materia medica_), which for fifteen centuries or more remained one of the chief authorities on that science. It treats of all the medicines then in use, with their preparations and action as then known. The work of this early physician first appeared in a Latin translation in 1478; the first Greek edition being published in 1499. The work was afterwards translated into Spanish, Italian, French, German, and Arabic. [Illustration: PEDACION DIOSCORIDES. From a drawing, 1598.] In describing the _Papaver sativum_ and its virtues in this work, he says: “It is not improper to subjoin the method in which the opus or juice of it is collected. Some, then, cutting the poppy heads with the leaves, squeeze them through a press, and rubbing them in a mortar, form them into troches. This is called meconium, and is weaker than the opus. But whoever desires to gather the juice must proceed thus: After the heads are moistened with dew, let him cut round the * (asterisk) with a knife, but not penetrate through them, and from the sides cut straight lines in the surface, and draw off the tear that flows with his finger into a shell. And come again, not long after, for it will be found standing upon it; and the day following it will be found in the same manner.” Hence the old name poppy tears. Dioscorides was also learned in the preparation of wool fat, which he calls œsypum, known to modern pharmacists as lanoline. He says: “Œsypum is the oily part collected from sordid wool, thus: The wool was washed in warm water and all its sordes expressed; the fat floated with a froth, and upon throwing in some sea-water it subsided; and when all the œsypum was obtained from it in this manner, it was purified by repeated affusions of water. When pure it had no sharp taste, and was in some degree astringent and appeared white, and was emollient and filled up ulcers.”