In 70 AD, a Greek physician traveling with the Roman army sat down to write a book that would influence medicine for the next 1,500 years.
Pedanius Dioscorides wasn't just copying what others had written. He traveled extensively—through Greece, Crete, Egypt, and Petra—personally collecting plant samples, interviewing local healers, and testing remedies on patients. His resulting work, De Materia Medica, described over 600 medicinal plants and roughly 1,000 medicines derived from them.
Among those plants was aloe vera. And what Dioscorides documented about aloe's applications for skin health reads remarkably like modern dermatological guidance.
The Father of Pharmacology's Approach
What made Dioscorides different from his predecessors wasn't just his thoroughness—it was his methodology.
In the preface to De Materia Medica, Dioscorides criticized earlier herbalists for incompleteness, mistakes in drug identification, and "too little testing and verification of drug properties." His stated goal was empirical: he wanted to organize drugs according to their actual effects on the body, verified through observation and clinical experience.
This was revolutionary. Rather than simply recording folklore, Dioscorides approached medicinal plants the way a modern researcher might—with systematic observation and attention to what actually worked.
For aloe vera specifically, Dioscorides documented its use for treating wounds, preventing hair loss, healing skin ulcers, and addressing various dermatological conditions. He recorded the plant's ability to stop bleeding, reduce inflammation, and promote healing—observations that would be validated by scientific research nearly two millennia later.
His book was so authoritative that it remained the standard medical reference through the medieval period, the Renaissance, and into the 19th century. The plant genus Dioscorea was later named in his honor by Linnaeus, and in 1934, a botanist named Sir Arthur Hill observed a monk on Mount Athos still using a copy of De Materia Medica to identify plants.
Why Ancient Observation Matters to Modern Science
There's a tendency to dismiss ancient medicine as primitive guesswork. But consider this: Dioscorides was conducting what we might now call observational clinical studies. He collected data from multiple sources, tested remedies on actual patients, and documented outcomes. His methodology was imperfect by modern standards, but his observations about aloe vera's effects on skin have been repeatedly confirmed by contemporary research.
Modern scientists have identified the specific compounds that explain what Dioscorides observed:
For wound healing: Dioscorides noted that aloe helped wounds close faster. We now know this is due to glucomannan, a mannose-rich polysaccharide that interacts with growth factor receptors on fibroblasts, stimulating collagen production and tissue repair.
For inflammation: Dioscorides documented aloe's ability to reduce swelling and redness. Modern research has identified that aloe inhibits inflammatory cytokines IL-6 and IL-8 while increasing anti-inflammatory IL-10.
For burns: Ancient physicians applied aloe to burns, and in 1935, researchers Collins and Collins published the first modern clinical report on aloe's effectiveness for radiation dermatitis—echoing treatments described thousands of years earlier.
The continuity is remarkable. Dioscorides was observing real biochemical effects; he simply lacked the technology to explain why they occurred.
The Vienna Dioscorides: A 1,500-Year Medical Reference
The endurance of De Materia Medica tells us something important about aloe vera's practical effectiveness.
The most famous surviving copy is the Vienna Dioscorides, a lavishly illustrated Byzantine manuscript created in 512 AD for a princess named Anicia Juliana. This single book was used as a hospital reference text in Constantinople for over a thousand years. It was amended over the centuries with plant names in Arabic, Turkish, Hebrew, and French as it passed through different hands and cultures.
When Emperor Maximilian II acquired the manuscript in 1569 for the imperial library in Vienna, it had already served as a working medical text for a millennium. People weren't preserving it as a historical curiosity—they were using it because the information worked.
Aloe vera's inclusion in this most authoritative of medical texts isn't coincidental. Thousands of physicians across hundreds of years observed the same effects Dioscorides first documented: aloe soothed irritated skin, helped wounds heal, and reduced inflammation. They continued using it because they continued seeing results.
From Ancient Text to Modern Laboratory
The transition from ancient observation to modern scientific validation happened surprisingly recently.
In 1935, Collins and Collins published a case report in the American Journal of Roentgenology documenting aloe vera's effectiveness for treating severe radiation dermatitis. A patient with X-ray burns on her forehead experienced relief from itching and burning within 24 hours of treatment with fresh aloe leaf. Within five weeks, normal skin sensation was restored with no scar formation.
This wasn't folklore—it was published medical research, and it echoed exactly what Dioscorides had documented 1,865 years earlier.
Since then, research has accelerated. A systematic review published in the Iranian Journal of Medical Sciences in 2019 analyzed 23 clinical trials on aloe vera for skin wound prevention and healing. The researchers concluded that aloe vera has been successfully used to prevent skin ulcers and treat burn wounds, postoperative wounds, and various skin conditions—applications remarkably consistent with those documented in ancient texts.
Research from Seoul National University in 2009 demonstrated that dietary aloe vera supplementation improved facial wrinkles and skin elasticity in women over 45, with significant increases in type I procollagen gene expression—the scientific explanation for the "anti-aging" benefits ancient Egyptian queens reportedly sought from the plant.
What This Means for Modern Skincare
When I formulate products on our Washington State farm, I think about this 6,000-year evidence trail.
Dioscorides didn't have access to chromatography or electron microscopes. He couldn't identify acemannan or measure cytokine levels. But he observed outcomes with systematic care, and those observations have been validated by every advance in scientific methodology since.
This is why organic aloe barbadensis appears in every Artisan formula. Not because it's a trend—trends come and go. We use it because from the Papyrus Ebers to De Materia Medica to modern peer-reviewed journals, the evidence for aloe's benefits to skin health has only grown stronger.
When an ingredient has been documented by the father of pharmacology, preserved in texts that served as working medical references for 1,500 years, and then validated by contemporary clinical research, that's not tradition for tradition's sake. That's an ingredient that has earned its place through continuous verification across human history.
Some skincare ingredients are new compounds with limited long-term data. Aloe vera comes with a research trail that begins in ancient Sumerian clay tablets and continues through the latest dermatological journals. For people whose skin needs gentle, proven support, that kind of evidence matters.
References
Pedanius Dioscorides. De Materia Medica. Circa 50-70 AD. [The foundational pharmacological text describing over 600 medicinal plants, including aloe vera's applications for wounds, skin ulcers, and dermatological conditions.]
Vienna Dioscorides (Codex Vindobonensis medicus graecus 1). Circa 512 AD. Byzantine manuscript, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna. [The lavishly illustrated Byzantine manuscript created for Princess Anicia Juliana, used as a hospital reference text in Constantinople for over a thousand years.]
Collins CE, Collins C. Roentgen dermatitis treated with fresh whole leaf of Aloe vera. American Journal of Roentgenology. 1935;33:396-397.
Hekmatpou D, Mehrabi F, Rahzani K, Aminiyan A. The effect of Aloe vera clinical trials on prevention and healing of skin wound: A systematic review. Iranian Journal of Medical Sciences. 2019;44(1):1-9. doi:10.30476/ijms.2019.40612
Cho S, Lee S, Lee MJ, et al. Dietary Aloe vera supplementation improves facial wrinkles and elasticity and it increases the type I procollagen gene expression in human skin in vivo. Annals of Dermatology. 2009;21(1):6-11. doi:10.5021/ad.2009.21.1.6
Surjushe A, Vasani R, Saple DG. Aloe vera: A short review. Indian Journal of Dermatology. 2008;53(4):163-166. doi:10.4103/0019-5154.44785
Riddle JM. Dioscorides on Pharmacy and Medicine. Austin: University of Texas Press; 1985.
Beck LY, translator. Pedanius Dioscorides of Anazarbus: De Materia Medica. Hildesheim, Germany: Olms-Weidmann; 2005.
