Barbaud J
Rev Hist Pharm (Paris). 1994;41(302):321-30.
The Greek "Alphabetical Dioscorides" of the Codex Vindobonensis (Viennese Codex) is above all a bibliographic work, remarkably illustrated, intended to show gratitude to an eminent person. It comprises exclusively currently-available plants which might be used by people of a cultivated milieu, who, not having studied medicine, would like to cure relatively benign illnesses while limiting any recourse to exotic drugs. On the contrary, the Latin Alphabaeticals from the eleventh century and the centuries following, as well as the Greek Alphabeticals of the Renaissance, cover all the drugs in the Materia medica and respond to the desire to quickly find the pharmacologic properties of medicinal herbs introduced into prescriptions which might be formulated by physicians.
