Krateuas

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Krateuas , also Kratevas , Crateuas or Cratevas , called "the root cutter " ( ancient Greek Κρατεύας ὁ ῥιζοτόμος ), was a Greek doctor and pharmacologist around 100 BC. He was also referred to as the "father of plant illustrations".

Krateuas. Detail from the second picture of doctors in the Vienna Dioscurides (sheet 3 verso )
Illustration of Arnoglosson in the Vienna Dioscurides (sheet 29v) as an example of a presumed copy from Krateuas manuscripts

Live and act

Crateuas was the personal physician of Mithridates VI. from Pontos . He wrote a three-part herbal book in which he described the medicinal properties of plants. He provided a second, popular edition with colored illustrations and arranged the plants in alphabetical order. With this he created the first herbal book with illustrations of plants, which became the model for numerous successors. So far only two papyrus fragments are known. Pliny the Elder reports that Krateuas painted pictures of plants and recorded their effects.

Krateuas' book is considered to be one of the main sources for Pedanios Dioscurides and his forerunners. With some of the panels of the so-called “ Vienna Dioscurides ” the illustration is supplemented by a short text that begins with the name Krateuas. A picture of Krateuas can be found on panel 3 of the “Wiener Dioskurides”.

In the 16th century there is said to have been a manuscript with illustrations by Krateuas in Constantinople. Luigi Anguillara is said to have written his treatise Semplici ... based on this manuscript in 1561 . Max Wellmann (1897) was able to prove, however, that a Latin Dioscurides was the source of Anguillara's writing. Wellmann also suspected that a large part of the plant illustrations in the Vienna Dioscurides were copied from Krateuas manuscripts from the 2nd or 3rd century. Charles Singer's studies confirmed this assumption.

Honor taxon

Carl von Linné named Krateuas in honor of the genus Crateva of the plant family of the caper family (Capparaceae).

proof

literature

  • Wilfrid Blunt : The Art of Botanical Illustration: An Illustrated History. Dover Publications . 1994, pp. 9-12. ISBN 0-486-27265-6
  • Kurt Sprengel : Kurt Sprengel's history of botany . Altenburg and Leipzig, 1817, p. 104 MDZ Munich
  • Max Wellmann .
    • Krateuas (= treatises of the royal society of sciences in Göttingen. Philological-historical class. New series, Volume 2, No. 1). Weidmann, Berlin 1897. Internet Archive
    • The oldest herbal book of the Greeks. In: Festgabe for Franz Susemihl. Teubner, Leipzig 1898, pp. 1-31 Internet Archive
  • Zohara Yaniv: Handbook of Medicinal Plants . Haworth Press: 2005, p. 167. ISBN 1-56022-995-0

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Proof of the spelling in "De materia medica, Dioscurides Pedianus, De materia medica, Wellmann, Weidmann, 1958"
  2. ^ Charles Singer : The herbal in antiquity. In: Journal of Hellenic Studies. Volume 47, 1927, pp. 1–52, here: p. 5.
  3. ^ The Vienna Dioscurides: Codex medicus Graecus 1 of the Austrian National Library. Graz: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt 1998 (highlights of book art) ISBN 3-201-01699-3 p. 18, commentary by Otto Mazal
  4. ↑ Botany in antiquity .
  5. ↑ Naturalis historia , 25, 8.
  6. ↑ Dioscurides' doctrine of pharmaceuticals ( Memento of the original from August 1, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.heilpflanze-welt.de
  7. ↑ Maria Przybyło: Dioscorides De materia medica .
  8. ↑ Luigi Anguillara. Semplici, liquali in piu pareri a diversi nobili nomini scritti appajano. Venice 1561 MDZ Munich
  9. ↑ Kurt Sprengel . History of medicine in antiquity. 1st division. 4th ed. Leipzig 1846, p. 593 Digital copy of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek
  10. ^ Charles Singer. The Herbal in the Antiquity. In: The journal of hellenic studies. Vol. XLVII (1927) pp. 1-52.
  11. ^ Carl von Linné: Critica Botanica . Leiden 1737, p. 92
  12. ↑ Carl von Linné: Genera Plantarum . Leiden 1742, p. 231.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Krateuas
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kratevas; Crateuas; Cratevas
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Greek doctor and pharmacologist
DATE OF BIRTH 2nd century BC Chr.
DATE OF DEATH 1st century BC Chr.