Pietro Andrea Mattioli

Who was Pietro Andrea Mattioli?

Pietro Andrea Gregorio Mattioli 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 Further 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 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, Czech, German 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.