Talk:Pedanius Dioscorides

Comments
According to User:Wetman's sources (from the Dioscurides article he had written), the later additions to the Materia Medica were more than just inconsequential notes: " Many Arabic advances in medicine appeared in the form of commentaries on the Materia Medica ". I'll leave it up to someone else to verify the situation.

I changed the statement in the earlier version of the article: "All that was written in these later manuscripts were minor additions, etc." because it wasn't accurate. Most additions probably were minor notes---but not all. Alexander 007 05:25, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Plagiarism
This article was a thinly dusguised copy of an entry in a manual of toxicology, too thin, I discovered it almost immediately. However, the plagiarized sentences and phrases are short. We can avoid the problem by quoting the plagiarized material with proper attribution, which I did or shortly am going to do. Now it isn't or won't be plagiarized. Whether we need to seek permission for the quoted material - well, it's a judgement call. The quotes are short and they are for educational purposes. I say no. The only other choices were a total rewrite or a request for deletion. But, a lot of work and WP formatting has gone into it, which it would be a shame to lose. So my solution is or will be shortly in the article. Do what you like, but do not plagiarize again if you please.Dave (talk) 13:39, 18 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Are you referring to the 2008 reference? The bulk of the text seems much as it was when I added my original snippet back in 2007.  Are you sure the 2008 reference didn't lift from WP? Stan (talk) 16:16, 18 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Hello there buddy. No, I'm NOT referring to the 2008 reference. Read the article again; I gave the reference, it is a book. However, I discovered ANOTHER instance where a passage was lifted from ANOTHER book, so I decided to get to the bottom of this. The article was created in 2003 by User:Kpjas. His method at that time was to lift text from books. The plagiarism dates from that time. You can see he is now a sysadm. If you are reading, Kpjas, I have no doubt you are aware by this time of your copyright violations. Whereas that does not mean I approve, I know that beginners on WP are prone to making such errors; I've made quite a few myself, although not plagiaristic. You undoubtedly were not aware that such unattributed copies are illegal. You undoubtedly are now aware that they are. No need to weigh in, I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt. You undoubtedly forgot all about it. For the rest of you, it only underlines the danger of accepting material without references and too hastily. The article originally had no refs. I spotted these violations because the text seemed a little too polished for the usual run of WP. Following the policy I ran the Internet check of five words and turned up these violations immediately. I'm going to attribute the second one I found. I may check for more. I've been fixing the formatting. We've spread ourselves very thin at WP. Someone has fix what is there, and it sure needs fixing.Dave (talk) 16:37, 18 February 2010 (UTC)


 * The mystery deepens. My second instance is a sentence added by User:Alex '05 in March of 2005. That user apparently is a sock puppet. The sentence appears in a book by Eric Block first published in 2009! Block has a whole string of credible medical credentials (according to his publisher). WP on this however was lifted by a newsletter in 2007. On this evidence I have to point the finger at Eric Block. He appears to have lifted stuff originally written by the sock puppet and published in the WP stub. He probably didn't know it was WP. He thought it was the newsletter. Maybe he is the sock puppet or maybe someone gave him permission. This is getting absolutely ridiculous. People copyright material they lifted from someone else even though it was previously copyrighted. You might ask someone for permission to republish material they originally asked you for permission to republish. See recursion. Since I cannot identify the source of this much quoted sentence I cannot attribute it. It's the "not only" one. The whole sentence has been passed around; it can't be a coincidence. I frown on this passing sentences around but unlike the previous I can't fix this one. If Block is copying WP it may be inadvertent. When you take notes sometimes you don't put the source in your notes. I have no reason to get negative in these conjectures. We should try to avoid these errors, however.Dave (talk) 17:50, 18 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Ha ha ha, yeah, early-days WP stuff has a way of being embarassing in various ways. This would be a good one to redraft afresh I think, just trying to grok the history is sucking up time unproductively. Stan (talk) 18:51, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Well it needs someone with an interest in classics motivated to do a good job. It is the sort of thing I would do if I weren't interested in something else right now. It will have to wait.Dave (talk) 18:55, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Pedanii Dioscuridis?
I'm really puzzled by "Pedanius Dioscorides (Ancient Greek: Πεδάνιος Διοσκουρίδης; c. 40 – 90 AD), or Pedanii Dioscuridis". This wording makes it seem that "Pedanius Dioscorides" and "Pedanii Dioscuridis" are two variants of the name. But in Latin, this is the same name in different cases, with just one o~u variation (nom. Pedanius Dioscorides, gen. Pedanii Dioscoridis vs. nom. Pedanius Dioscurides, gen. Pedanii Dioscuridis).

Basically, almost any Latin name has several case forms. E.g. nom. Caesar, gen. Caesaris. Nom. Brutus, gen. Bruti. Nom. Cicero, gen. Ciceronis. And so on. The usual practice is to list only the nominative form, or the forms used in English (e.g. Livius and Livy).

Unless genitive is really used in English (which would be surprising, but not impossible; but my quick googling didn't seem to yiels results supporting this), I suggest changing the first sentence to "Pedanius Dioscorides (Ancient Greek: Πεδάνιος Διοσκουρίδης; c. 40 – 90 AD), or Pedanius Dioscurides" (i.e. to show there's o~u variation), or just removing the "or" part. Хтосьці (talk) 11:19, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

for us Greek geeks
Materia medica is available in Greek on Internet Archive in three editions, one on microform, and one edition on Google books. Worth an external link, right? 100.15.127.199 (talk) 14:20, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

Why transliteration without 'u'?
Why is the name transliterated ‘Dioscorides’, not “Dioscurides” or ‘Dioscourides’? (This may have been part of Хтосьці's question above.) ◅ Sebastian 01:01, 10 July 2021 (UTC)