Page from a manuscript of Dioscorides' De Materia
Medica
Possibly from Baghdad, Iraq
AD 1224
'A discussion between two doctors and a student' in a treatise
on herbal medicine
The scene takes place in a beautiful house. Two doctors sit on
low couches, listening to the young apprentice seated on the floor
between them. The book on the x-shaped bookstand beside the doctor
on the left may be a medical handbook such as the one that this
illustrates.
Pedanius Dioscorides was a Roman army doctor in the first
century AD. His treatise describes how to make medicine from up to
five hundred plants, explaining where to find each plant, how to
harvest it, how to prepare it as a drug, and which ailments it will
cure. The book was translated into Arabic in the mid-ninth century
at a famous translation institute in Baghdad, known as the House of
Wisdom.
The illustrations to early copies of herbal manuscripts took the
form of simple diagrams of plants, but occasionally included a
portrait of the author or patron at the beginning of the book.
Other, more narrative, subjects began to appear, such as men
harvesting herbs and roots, doctors concocting medicine in the
pharmacy-workshop, and the patients being treated with the freshly
prepared drug. A conversation between two doctors, or between the
doctor and his young apprentice, was also a popular illustration in
books on medicine.
R. Ettinghausen, Arab painting (Geneva, 1962)
K. Weitzmann, 'The Greek sources of Islamic scientific illustrations' in Archaeologica Orientalia in me (, 1952), pp. 244-66