James Tyler Kent (1849–1916) was an American physician best remembered as a forefather of modern homeopathy. In 1897 Kent published a massive guidebook on human physical and mental disease symptoms and their associated homeopathic remedies entitled Repertory of the Homeopathic Materia Medica, which has been translated into a number of languages. It has been the blueprint to many modern repertories used throughout the world and even remains in use by some homeopathic practitioners today.
Pedanius Dioscorides was a Greek physician, pharmacologist, botanist, and author of De Materia Medica —a 5-volume Greek encyclopedia about herbal medicine and related medicinal substances, that was widely read for more than 1,500 years. He was employed as a physician in the Roman army.
The Compendium of Materia Medica is a Chinese herbology volume written by Li Shizhen during the Ming dynasty; its first draft was completed in 1578. It is a work epitomizing the materia medica known at the time. The Compendium of Materia Medica is regarded as the most complete and comprehensive medical book ever written in the history of traditional Chinese medicine. It lists all the plants, animals, minerals, and other items that were believed to have medicinal properties.
King's American Dispensatory is a book first published in 1854 that covers the uses of herbs used in American medical practice, especially by those involved in eclectic medicine, which was the botanical school of medicine in the 19th to 20th centuries. In 1880 John Uri Lloyd, an eclectic pharmacist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, promised his friend, Professor King, to revise the pharmaceutical and chemical sections of the American Dispensatory. Eighteen years later an entirely rewritten eighteenth edition was published in 1898. It was co-authored by eclectic physician Harvey Wickes Felter
Li Shizhen, courtesy name Dongbi, was a Chinese acupuncturist, herbalist, naturalist, pharmacologist, physician, and writer of the Ming dynasty. His major contribution to clinical medicine was his 27-year work, which is found in his scientific book Compendium of Materia Medica. He is also considered to be the greatest scientific naturalist of China, and developed many innovative methods for the proper classification of herb components and medications to be used for treating diseases.
John Uri Lloyd was an American pharmacist and leader of the eclectic medicine movement who was influential in the development of pharmacognosy, ethnobotany, economic botany, and herbalism.
Yaoxing Lun, literally Treatise on the Nature of Medicinal Herbs, is a 7th-century Tang Dynasty Chinese treatise on herbal medicine.
Processing in Chinese materia medica is the technique of altering the properties, sterilizing and removing poisons of crude medicines by processing using heat and combination with various materials in a kind of alchemical approach to preparation.
Finley Ellingwood was a doctor of Eclectic Medicine who is the author of the influential The American Materia Medica, Therapeutics and Pharmacognosy in 1919. Ellingwood was an active Chicago physician with many years experience, and an acknowledged expert in obstetrical/gynecological medicine. He was a vocal advocate of women physicians, and edited Ellingwood's Therapeutist for many years. His brand of Eclectic Medicine differed from the more subdued Cincinnati style as mentored by Scudder, Lloyd, Fyfe and Felter.
Dr. John Milton Scudder was a 19th-century physician and practitioner of eclectic medicine. He was born September 8, 1829, in Ohio and died February 17, 1894. He was a Swedenborgian by faith.
John William Fyfe was a teaching physician in New York in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Morinda officinalis, also known as Indian mulberry is a plant in the genus Morinda.
The Physician Preparing an Elixir is a miniature on a folio from an illustrated manuscript copy, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York of De Materia Medica, a large herbal or work on the (mostly) medical uses of plants originally written by the ancient Greco-Roman physician, Pedanius Dioscorides, in the first century AD. This page of the manuscript, dated 1224 AD, is made from paper, sized 24.8 cm wide and 33.2 cm long, and is decorated by opaque watercolor, ink, and gold detailing. It is visually split into three horizontal portions from the top of the page to the bottom; the top of the page is dominated by two lines of Arabic script, followed by the image and then five more lines of text in Arabic. The writing below the image is predominantly black with the exception of one line, which is written in red ink and is therefore highlighted to the viewer. The page is usually not on display.
De materia medica is a pharmacopoeia of medicinal plants and the medicines that can be obtained from them. The five-volume work was written between 50 and 70 CE by Pedanius Dioscorides, a Greek physician in the Roman army. It was widely read for more than 1,500 years until supplanted by revised herbals in the Renaissance, making it one of the longest-lasting of all natural history books.
Moodeen Sheriff, the Anglicized form of Mohideen Sheriff was an Indian surgeon and practitioner of herbal medicine who worked in Madras and was the posthumous author of the Materia Medica of Madras. He was known for his expertise and knowledge of native herbal medicine and contributed to the works on economic botany by Sir George Watt. He worked for many years at the Triplicane Dispensary and was conferred the title of Khan Bahadur in 1870.
