Herbalist

“ Perhaps the most obvious of these is the incalculable debt which Botany owes to Medicine. An overwhelming majority of the herbalists were physicians, who were led to the study of botany on account of its connection with the arts of healing. As we have already pointed out, medicine gave the original impulse, not only to Systematic Botany, but also to the study of the Anatomy of Plants.
However, as the evolution of the herbal proceeded, we have shown that botany rose from being a mere hand-maid of medicine to a position of comparative independence. ”

“ The herbalists seem to have attempted to keep their business select by fencing it about with all manner of superstitions, most of which have for their moral that herb-collecting is too dangerous an occupation for the uninitiated. Theophrastus draws attention to the absurdity of some of the root-diggers’ directions for gathering medicinal plants. ”

“ As we shall show in later chapters, nearly all the herbalists whose work is discussed in the present volume were medical men. The necessity for some means of recognising accurately the individual species of medicinal plants led in time to a sounder and more exact knowledge of their morphology than had ever been acquired under the influence of thinkers such as Albertus Magnus, who regarded with some contempt the idea of becoming acquainted in detail with the countless forms of plant life. ”

“ They are herb-gathering. The herbalists have a notion that deadly night-shade, for instance, and several other materials for medicines, are of better quality in their wild state than when grown for sale. What a quantity of that night-shade there is in this lane! ”

“ A strip for a little herbary half-way between the flower and vegetable garden would form a very appropriate transition stratum and might be the means, by being more under the eye of the mistress, of recovering to our soups and salads some of the comparatively neglected herbs of tarragon, and French sorrel, and purslane, and chervil, and dill, and clary, and others whose place is now nowhere to be found but in the pages of the old herbalists. ”

“ The owner of this particular garden in Fetter Lane is the most famous of all the English herbalists. His Herbal, [76] which was published in 1597, gripped the imagination of the English garden-loving world, and now, after the lapse of three hundred years, it still retains its hold on us. There are English-speaking people the world over who may know nothing of any other, but at least by name they know Gerard’s Herbal. ”

“ When eaten raw, it both clears the sight and the perceptions of the mind, and when cooked it destroys fleas. The English herbalists called it Herb Grace and Serving-men’s Joy, because of the multiplicity of ailments that it was warranted to cure ”

“ In the botanical history of the middle ages, as more especially developed in Macer’s Herbal, there was not a plant of medicinal use, that was not placed under the dominion of some planet, and must neither be gathered nor applied but with observances that savoured of the 13most absurd superstition, and which we find were preserved as late as the seventeenth century, by the astrological herbalists, Turner, Culpepper, and Lovel. ”

“ In a similar way, the old herbalists, with their secret potions and mysterious compounds, were the instigators of the accurate study of medicine, and most important from our standpoint, were instruments which greatly advanced the love and growing appreciation of plants and flowers. ”

“ Turner is one of the few herbalists who cautions against the excessive use of any herb. “Onions eaten in meat largely make the head ake, they make them forgetfull whiche in the tyme of syknes use them out of mesure.” “Cole engendreth euell and melancholie juice. It dulleth the syght and it troubleth the slepe wyth contrary thynges which are sene in the dreme.” Of nigella he writes: “Take hede that ye take not to muche of this herbe, for if ye go beyonde the mesure it bryngeth deth.” ”

“ When we turn to those general schemes of classification which were evolved by the herbalists of the sixteenth century, we are at once struck by the great difference existing between the principles on which these schemes are based, and those at which we have arrived at the present day. To classify plants according to their uses and medicinal properties is obviously the first suggestion that arises, when the universe is regarded from a simple, anthropocentric standpoint. ”

“ The herbalists were never weary of teaching the value of sweet scents. [51] “If odours may worke satisfaction,” wrote Gerard in his Herball, “they are so soveraigne in plants and so comfortable that no confection of the apothecaries can equall their excellent vertue.” One of the most delicious “scent” prescriptions in Askham is to be found under Violet—“For thē that may not slepe for sickness seeth this herb in water and at euen let him soke well hys feete in the water to the ancles, whā he goeth to bed, bind of this herbe to his temples and he shall slepe wel by the grace of God.” ”

“ The herbalists’ knowledge of plants must have been in the first place transmitted from generation to generation entirely by word of mouth, but as time went on, written records began to replace the oral tradition. The earliest extant European work dealing with medicinal plants is the famous Materia Medica of Dioscorides, which was accepted as an almost infallible authority as late as the Renaissance period. ”

“ Too often, however, the trade in simples and herbs was carried on by needy and ignorant persons—so-called herbalists, quack doctors, and charlatans, or aged crones, desirous of turning to account the superficial knowledge they possessed of the properties of the plants which grew on the neighbouring hill-sides, or were to be found nearer at hand in the fields and hedgerows. ”

“ Just so do the college of physicians lie at home and domineer and suck out the sweetness of other men’s labours and studies, themselves being as ignorant in the matter of herbs as a child of four years old, as I can make appear to any rational man by their last dispensatory.”
It was not unnatural that the Herbalists should maintain the superiority of vegetable over mineral drugs, and Gerarde expresses his opinions in the introduction to his “Herbal.” “I confesse blind Pluto is nowadays more sought after than quick-sighted Phœbus, and yet this dusty metall,... ”

“ MANDRAKE FROM A SAXON HERBAL
(Sloane 1975, folio 49a)
In the treatment of disease we find that the material remedies, by which I mean remedies devoid of any mystic meaning, are with few exceptions entirely herbal. The herb drinks were made up with ale, milk or vinegar, many of the potions were made of herbs mixed with honey, and ointments were made of herbs worked up with butter. The most scientific prescription is that for a vapour bath, [22] and there are suggestions for what may become fashionable once more—herb baths. ”

“ For winter use the tops of the most useful kinds of herbs should be cut when in flower or full leaf and quite dry, and spread out in an airy but shady place so as to part slowly with the moisture they contain and at the same time retain their aromatic properties. When quite dry they should be put into dry wide-mouthed bottles and kept closely corked. In this way such herbs as basil, marjoram, mint, sage, savory, thyme, balm, chamomile, horehound, hyssop and rue, as well as parsley, may be had throughout the season with almost the full flavour of the fresh herb. ”

“ This idea is one which constantly recurs in the herbals. In 1664 Robert Turner wrote, “For what Climate soever is subject to any particular Disease, in the same Place there grows a Cure.” There is ample evidence of the survival of this theory even in the nineteenth century; for instance, in the preface to Thomas Green’s ‘Universal Herbal’ of 1816 we find the remark, “Nature has, in this country, as well as in all others, provided, in the herbs of its own growth, the remedies for the several diseases to which it is most subject.” ”

“ After this period, botany rapidly became more scientific; the discovery of the function of the stamens, which was first announced in 1682, marking a very definite step in advance. As time went on, the herbal, with its characteristic mixture of medical and botanical lore, gave way before the exclusively medical pharmacopœia on the one hand, and the exclusively botanical flora on the other. As the use of home-made remedies declined, and the chemist’s shop took the place of the housewife’s herb-garden and still-room, the practical value of the herbal diminished almost to vanishing point. ”

“ The olitory or herb-garden is a part of our horticulture now comparatively neglected, and yet once the culture and culling of simples was as much a part of female education as the preserving and tying down of ‘rasps and apricocks.’ There was not a Lady Bountiful in the kingdom but made her dill-tea and diet-drink from herbs of her own planting; and there is a [6] neatness and prettiness about our thyme, and sage, and mint and marjoram, that might yet, we think, transfer them from the patronage of the blue serge to that of the white muslin apron. ”

“ Herbal Simples stand to-day safely determined on sure ground by the help of the accurate chemist. They hold their own with the best, and rank high for homely cures, because of their proved constituents. Their manifest healing virtues are shown to depend on medicinal elements plainly disclosed by analysis. Henceforward the curtain of oblivion must fall on cordial waters distilled mechanically from sweet herbs, and on electuaries artlessly compounded of seeds and roots by a Lady Monmouth, or a Countess of Arundel, as in the Stuart and Tudor times. ”

“ To prepare a dinner of herbs in its best estate you should have a bed of seasonings such as our grandmothers had in their gardens, rows of sage, of spicy mint, sweet marjoram, summer savory, fragrant thyme, tarragon, chives and parsley. To these we may add, if we take herbs in the Scriptural sense, nasturtium, and that toothsome esculent, the onion, as well as lettuce. If you wish a dinner of herbs [Pg 8] and have not the fresh, the dried will serve, but parsley and mint you can get at most times in the markets, or in country gardens, where they often grow wild. ”

“ Five hundred Points of Good Husbandry.—Tusser.
The majority of herbs are not exacting in their requirements, but a few foreigners thrive the better for a little protection as a start. This is the opinion of a successful gardener on the Herb-Border in an ordinary kitchen-garden: “As to soil and situation, I used to devote a border entirely to Herbs, under a privet hedge, facing north-west, with a rough marly bottom. I had a plant [146] of most varieties I could get hold of, both Culinary and Medicinal.” ”

“ Scattered through the Herbal we find recipes for the cure of many other ailments with which modern science does not attempt to cope. For instance, under “peony” we read: “The black graines (that is the seed) to the number of fifteene taken in wine or mead is a speciall remedie for those that are troubled in the night with the disease called the Night Mare, which is as though a heavy burthen were laid upon them and they oppressed therewith, as if they were overcome with their enemies, or overprest with some great weight or burthen, and they are also good against melancholie dreames.” ”

“ As, however, the shoots will not be well furnished with leaves, when several years old, it will be proper to raise an annual stock of young plants.
Both the summer and winter savory have long been cultivated in the British gardens, for culinary, and medicinal purposes. Their warm aromatic, and pungent leaves, are much esteemed in salads: formerly, they were employed medicinally, with a view to attenuate viscid humours, to dispel flatulency, and to increase the appetite.—According to Prof. Bradley, this herb, when dry, and put into a bed, possesses the remarkable property of expelling fleas. ”

“ There is a small onion to give a taste—in the other is a good herb, called Lord have mercy on us. These, and many other holy herbs are contained in it, all boiling in the heart of man, will make as good pottage as the world can afford, especially if you use these herbs for digestion. The herb repentance, the herb grace, the herb faith, the herb love, the herb hope, the herb good works, the herb feeling, the herb zeal, the herb fervency, the herb ardency, the herb constancy, with many more of this nature, most excellent for digestion. ”

“ The decoction of the herb, both leaves and flowers, in wine, taken and drank, doth somewhat move the belly downwards, opens obstructions of the liver, and helps the yellow jaundice; expels poison, provokes women’s courses, drives forth the dead child, and after-birth. The distilled water of the herb and flowers is effectual for all the same purposes; being drank with a dram of the powder of the seeds of bark or the roots of Wall-wort, and a little Cinnamon, for certain days together, it is held a singular remedy for the dropsy. ”

“ Whenever these peculiarities co–exist in a plant, we may be sure that there is nothing deleterious about it. More than fifty different plants formed on this plan grow wild in England, and considerably over two thousand in foreign countries, and not one of them is in the least degree noxious, either to quadruped or to man. Many are aromatic, and used with food, as thyme, sage, mint, basil, and penny–royal; while others are useful for medicinal tea, as balm and ground–ivy. ”

“ The juice heated with the oil of Roses, and dropped into the ears, eases them of the noise and singing in them, and of deafness also. Outwardly applied with wheat flour, in manner of a poultice, it gives ease to the sciatica and palsied members, heating and warming them, and takes away their pains. It also takes away the pain that comes by stinging of bees, wasps, &c.
SAVINE.
To describe a plant so well known is needless, it being nursed up almost in every garden, and abides green all the Winter. ”