Herbals

“ Many of these early herbals were printed in Latin as the standard language of medicine and learning generally, but later they were printed in the vernacular of the country in which they were written, and often something symbolic of the particular plant they illustrated was added to appeal more strongly to the mind of the reader. ”

“ English Plants are drawn from Nature to the greatest Accuracy, Flowers, or Parts, too small to be distinguished, are magnified. Nothing in any Language exceeds this Thirty Years laborious Work, of which may truly be said that Nature only equals it, every Thing of the Kind, hitherto attempted, being trivial, compared to this inimitable Performance. Designed to promote Botanical Knowledge, prevent Mistakes in the Use of Simples in compounding and preparing Medicines, to illustrate, and render such Herbals as want the Just Representations in their proper Figures and Colour more useful. ”

“ The Grete Herball is alphabetically arranged, for the idea of the natural relationship of plants was unknown at that time. But we find a “classification” of fungi. “Fungi ben musherons. There be two maners of them, one maner is deadly and sleeth them that eateth of them and the other dooth not”! As in most sixteenth- and seventeenth-century herbals, there are quaint descriptions of a good many things besides herbs. ”

“ In the present chapter no attempt has been made to discuss the illustrations of those herbals (e.g. the works of Turner, Tabernæmontanus, Gerard, etc.) in which most of the wood-cuts are copied from previous books. ”

“ Immediately after the publication of the Kruydtbœck, Plantin brought out an album of the engravings it had contained, which, although they had been also used to illustrate the herbals of Dodoens and de l’Écluse, were now grouped according to de l’Obel’s arrangement, which was recognised as the best.
3. The Herbal in Italy.
The Italian botanists of the Renaissance devoted themselves chiefly to interpreting the works of the classical writers on Natural History, and to the identification of the plants to which they referred. ”

“ In manuscript form, herbals have existed from very early times, but, in the present book, those prior to the invention of printing have been scarcely touched upon. Our subject has been limited to the most active life-period of the printed herbal, which may be reckoned as beginning in the last quarter of the fifteenth century, with the ‘Book of Nature,’ the ‘Herbarium’ of Apuleius, and the Latin and German ‘Herbarius.’ When this active period ended is less easily decided, but in some senses it may fairly be taken as224 covering only the comparatively short space of two hundred years. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This prescription runs thus:—
“Against want of appetite. Let them, after the night’s fast, lap up honey, and let them seek for themselves fatigue in riding on horseback or in a wain or such conveyance as they may endure.”—Leech Book, II. 7.
In the later herbals, “beauty” recipes are, as is well known, a conspicuous feature, but they find a place also in these old manuscripts. In the third book (the oldest part) of the Leech Book there is a prescription for sunburn which runs thus:—
“For sunburn boil in butter tender ivy twigs, smear therewith.”—Leech Book, III. 29. ”

“ Another very early book based on classical writings, especially those of Dioscorides and Pliny, was the ‘Herbarium’ of Apuleius Platonicus. This little Latin work is among the earliest to which the term “Herbal” is generally applied. A herbal has been defined as a book containing the names and descriptions of herbs, or of plants in general, with their properties and virtues. ”

“ 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 vertuouse Book of the Dystillacion of the Waters of all maner of Herbes is well printed, but the illustrations are from the same inferior German cuts as those in the Grete Herball. The book was translated into English by Laurence Andrew and, though strictly it does not come within the category of herbals, part of the preface is too beautiful to omit. “Lerne the hygh and meruelous vertue of herbes. Knowe how inestimable a preservative to the helth of man god hath provyded growying euery daye at our hande, use the effectes with reverence, and give thankes to the maker celestyall. ”

“ For they are full of the old herb lore and of the uses of herbs in homely medicines. It must be remembered that even as late as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries every woman was supposed to have some knowledge of both the preparation and the medicinal use of herbs and simples. ”

“ The medicinal properties of plants are thus the outcome of qualities that are not obvious at sight. How, then, is the physician to be guided in selecting herbal remedies to cure the several ailments of his patients? The answer to this question given by Paracelsus is summed up in what is known as the Doctrine of Signatures. ”

“ 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. ”

“ These portraits are powerfully drawn, and remarkably convincing. It is pleasant to think that we know not merely the names, but the very features of the men who collaborated to give us what is perhaps the most beautiful herbal ever produced. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Much of the old Saxon herb lore is to be found in the leech books of the Middle Ages, but, with one notable exception, no important original treatise on herbs by an English writer has come down to us from that period. The vast majority of the herbal MSS. are merely transcriptions of Macer’s herbal, a mediæval Latin poem on the virtues of seventy-seven plants, which is believed to have been written in the tenth century. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The illustrations in Brunfels’ herbal were engraved, and probably drawn also, by Hans Weiditz, or Guiditius, some of whose work has been ascribed to Albrecht Dürer.172 The title ‘Herbarum vivæ eicones’—‘Living Pictures of Plants’—indicates the most distinctive feature of the book, namely that the artist went direct to nature, instead of regarding the plant world through the eyes of previous draughtsmen. ”

“ 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. ”

“ From the very beginning of its existence, the study of plants has been approached from two widely separated standpoints—the philosophical and the utilitarian. Regarded from the first point of view, Botany stands on its own merits, as an integral branch of natural philosophy, whereas, from the second, it is merely a by-product of medicine or agriculture. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He supposed, for example, that long-lived plants would lengthen a man’s life, while short-lived plants would abbreviate it. He held that herbs with a yellow sap would cure jaundice, while those whose surface was rough to the touch would heal those diseases that destroy the natural smoothness of the skin. The resemblance of certain plants to certain animals opened to Porta a vast field of dogmatism on a basis of conjecture. ”

“ He explains that while waiting to complete his herbal, he has been advised to publish this little book in which he has set forth the names of plants. He adds, “and because men should not thynke that I write of that I never sawe, and that Poticaries shoulde be excuselesse when as the ryghte herbes are required of them, I have shewed in what places of Englande, Germany, and Italy the herbes growe and maye be had for laboure and money.” ”

“ 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.” ”

“ To the fairy stories which embody such myths children of unnumbered generations have listened, and they demand them over and over again because they, too, are sure that they are real.
Nor is the mystery of numbers lacking in these herbal prescriptions, particularly the numbers three and nine. In the alliterative lay of the nine healing herbs this is very conspicuous. Woden, we are told, smote the serpent with nine magic twigs, the serpent was broken into nine parts, from which the wind blew the nine flying venoms. ”

“ This distinction, however, is a somewhat arbitrary one; the more philosophical of botanists have not disdained at times to consider the uses of herbs, and those who entered upon the subject, with a purely medical intention, have often become students of plant life for its own sake. At different periods in the evolution of the science, one or other aspect has predominated, but from classical times onwards, it is possible to trace the development of these two distinct lines of inquiry, which have sometimes2 converged, but more often pursued parallel and unconnected paths. ”

“ The progress of a science, like that of a sailing boat, more often proceeds by means of “tacking” than by following a direct course.
In the case of botany, the path which was destined to lead furthest in the end was the apparently unpromising one of medicine. Various plants from very early times had been used as healing agents, and it became necessary to study them in detail, simply in order to discriminate the kinds employed for different purposes. It was from this7 purely utilitarian beginning that systematic botany for the most part originated. ”

“ 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.” ”