Medicine
515. The «Dioscorides of Vienna», (Folio 36v), Constantinople. This Byzantine manuscript, containing a copy of the treatise De materia medica by the Greek physician Dioscorides of Anazarbus (1st century), was made for the Byzantine princess Anicia Juliana (circa 462 - 528). Famous for the preciousness of its illustrations, it was used in later centuries in the Imperial Hospital of Constantinople, as evidenced by annotations in Greek and Arabic on its pages. Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons 0 1.0 Universal Licence

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Medicine

III Ink Uses and Users

The Greek physician and pharmacologist Dioscorides of Anazarbus (1st century) states the following on the medical properties of ink:

«It is good for putrefactive wounds and for burns, being smeared on thick with water and left alone until cicatrisation; for it automatically falls off once the sores have healed.» (De materia medica 5.162.2)

The ink used in antiquity was composed of natural substances that were recognised in the medical and pharmacological traditions of the time as having a range of therapeutic properties. For example, gum Arabic was attributed astringent properties, suitable for treating open wounds (De materia medica 1.101); soot from pine wood was good for eye complaints (ibid. 1.69), and so on. It is therefore not surprising that ink was also considered a pharmakon, a substance with special properties, in this case medicinal.