A very important role was played by perfumes in medicine. In truth, there was no difference between perfumes and medicines. Perfume makers were the equivalent of our pharmacists. They made special unguents under the orders of physicians to cure all manners of illnesses and physicians tried to adapt existing types of perfume and perfumed wine to different ailments. The most complete list of perfume recipes extant from antiquity, the De Materia Medica written by Dioscorides during the first century A.D., and in the Graeco-Roman papyri from Egypt.