Ebook: The Greek Herbal of Dioscorides

THE great work compiled during the first century A.D. by Dioscorides of Anazarba in Cilicia has been the chief source whence, for fifteen centuries and more, herbalists of all nations have drawn their inspiration, yet no English translation has hitherto been published. The first English writer to realize the importance of rendering this fountain-head of medical and botanical knowledge available for his fellow-countrymen was JOHN GOODYER, the great Botanist of Petersfield. Between the years 1652 and 1655 he laboriously wrote out the entire Greek text with an interlinear English translation on 4,540 quarto pages; and this, so far as I am aware, is the one and only attempt at an English Dioscorides. [From the editor's preface - 1934]