J. Worth Estes 2005 Prize
Londa Schiebinger the winner of the 2005 J. Worth Estes prize received a print from a rare facsimile edition of the 6th Century Vienna Dioscorides (original in the Austrian National Library in Vienna)
Drakontaia Mikra (Aron)
The aron represented below is a fresh blooming plant, and is designated in the accompanying text as "the small dragon", a name which was used later only for the Mediterranean aron species Dracunculus vulgaris. Here the speckled aron, Arum maculatum, is meant...
Also known as dragonwort, snake's-meat or adder's tongue: these associations were preserved popularly -- partly because of the strange outward appearance, partly because various species of the plant had been employed since antiquity as an antidote for snakebite...The aron root was described in Dioscorides as an expectorant in decocted form or fresh, dried or broken up. Whoever rubbed the root into his hands supposedly was protected against snake-bite, and cheese wrapped in aron was protected from rotting. The crushed leaves of the aron were used as compresses on wounds; from which later the meaning of "break root", i.e. for treatment and healing fractures arose. These various qualities which were attributed to the aron since ancient times have been transmitted through folk medicine for centuries.
As a medicinal plant, various qualities were attributed to the arum. Already in the ancient world...it is mentioned as a remedy against lung diseases, which earned it the name "lung herb," and later, especially in the seventeenth century, "consumption root" (thus used against consumption, or phthisis). It was used into the eighteenth century as gentian or galingale against "rotting gastric fever." The popular names "stomach root" or "gobble root" allude to its effects as a stomach cleanser and appetite stimulant.