| Pietro Andrea Mattioli | |
|---|---|
Wood engraving from Epistolarum Medicinalium libri quinque, 1561 Prague
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| Born | 23 March 1501 Siena |
| Died | 1577 Trento |
Pietro Andrea Gregorio Mattioli (Matthiolus) (Italian pronunciation: [ˈpjɛtro anˈdrɛa greˈgɔrjo matˈtjɔli]) (23 March 1501, Siena – 1577, Trento) was a doctor and naturalist born in Siena.
He received his MD at the University of Padua in 1523, and subsequently practiced the profession in Siena, Rome, Trento and Gorizia, becoming personal physician of Ferdinand II, Archduke of Austria in Prague and Ambras Castle, and of Maximilian II, Holy Roman Emperor in Vienna.
Mattioli described the first case of cat allergy. His patient was so sensitive to cats that if he was sent into a room with a cat he reacted with agitation, sweating and pallor.
A careful student of botany, he described 100 new plants and coordinated the medical botany of his time in his Discorsi ("Commentaries") on the Materia Medica of Dioscorides. The first edition of Mattioli's work appeared in 1544 in Italian. There were several later editions in Italian and translations into Latin (Venice, 1554), Czech, (Prague, 1562), German (Prague, 1563) and French.
In addition to identifying the plants originally described by Dioscorides, Mattioli added descriptions of some plants not in Dioscorides and not of any known medical use, thus marking a transition from to the study of plants as a field of medicine to a study of interest in its own right. In addition, the woodcuts in Mattioli's work were of a high standard, allowing recognition of the plant even when the text was obscure. A noteworthy inclusion is an early variety of tomato,the first documented example of the vegetable being grown and eaten in Europe[1].
The plant genus Matthiola was named by Robert Brown in honor of Mattioli[2].