Subrosa 42 - Historic Herbals

HISTORIC HERBALS – PART II

By Bea and Bill Jennings

In the March – April 2005 issue of Subrosa, a representative sampling of Historic Herbals was given showing the evolution of Western thinking about plants from the Greeks, beginning with Aristotle (384 – 322 BC), down to Romans and the Anglo-Saxons, to the Norman Conquest in 1066 AD. In this issue of Subrosa, the Historic Herbals - Part II continues to follow the evolution of Western plant lore from 1066 AD through Gutenberg’s invention of moveable type in 1450 to 1800.

After the Norman Conquest in 1066, Latin replaced English for use in documents and chronicles. There was a near total eclipse of the English vernacular as the language of literature, law, and administration. Written English hardly appeared until the 13th century. English herbals began to appear soon after the invention of printing in 1450.

Matthaeus Platearius composed De simplicibus medicinis, often referenced as the ‘Circa Instans’ in 1150. In the early herbals plants were referred to as “simples”, thus the plants of medicine.

Hildegard von Bingen, the abbess known as the “Healer of the Rhine”, authored the Liber subtilitatum diversarum naturarum creaturarum between 1151 and 1158. Her work contained about 140 herbs and described their medicinal uses. Hildegard’s writings are often divided into a Book of Simple Medicine and a Book of Composed Medicine.

Albertus Magnus, Saint (c.1200 – 1280). When he was Albert of Bollstädt, Bishop of Ratisbon, he was considered to be one of the most learned men of his age. He was called Albertus Magnus during his lifetime; the title was conferred on him by the consent of the schools. St. Thomas Aquinas was one of his pupils.

Albertus Magnus treatise, De vegetabilibus, written before 1256, introduced many advances in the classification of plants. He also noted the difference between thorns and prickles; noting that thorns are but modified branches, while prickles are hardened outgrowths of surface tissue.

Bartholomaeus Anglicus (c.1200), a monk who was a contemporary of Albertus Magnus, wrote Liber de proprietatibus rerun in 1250. His work was translated into English in 1398. The English translation of his work was first printed in 1470, and no less than twenty-five editions appeared before the end of the fifteenth century.

Banckes Herbal is a compilation of herbal treatises from anonymous sources that was published by Richard Banckes in 1525. It was the first printed English herbal. It contains a copy of the famous discourse on the virtues of rosemary sent by the Countess of Hainault to her daughter Queen Philippa, wife of Edward I (1239 – 1307).

Konrad von Megenberg wrote Das puch der nature (or Buch der nature, “Book of Nature”) in 1475. It included the very first known woodcuts for botanical illustrations. Very few original drawings for herbals were made for herbals before the 16th century: illustrations generally were copies of copies of copies. Often plants became infused with mythology and began to lose any resemblance to the plants they depicted.

Incunabula, or books printed before 1501, included many herbals due to the invention of moveable type printing in the middle of the fifteenth century. Two of the earliest known books containing strictly botanical information is that of 1398 English translation of Barthololmaeus Anglicus’ Liber de proprietatibus rerum in 1470 and Konrad von Megenberg’s Da puch der Nature in 1475. Four other books containing the names and descriptions of herbs, or plants in general, with their properties and medicinal value were: (1) Herbarium Apuleii Platonici (?1481), printed at Monte Cassino by Johannes Philippus de Lignamine, a Sicilian, and three works published in Mainz, Germany, (2) Latin Herbarius (1484), (3) German Herbarius (1485), and the Hortus or Ortus sanitatis (1491).

Otto Brunfels (1488 – 1534) wrote the two volume Herbarum vivae eicones (“Living Pictures of Herbs”) from 1530 to 1540. It contains excellent and accurate drawings by the wood engraver Hans Weiditz.

Hieronymus Bock (1498 – 1554) was a German priest, physician, and botanist. He brought medieval botany to modern science when he wrote the New Kreuter buch in 1539. In his book, he carefully provided detailed descriptions of the plants. In his 1546 edition, he again carefully illustrated each of the 700 plants and classified them on the bases of structural similarity.

Pietro Andrea Gregorio Mattioli (1500 – 1577) is an Italian physician and botanist whose Di Pedacio Dioscoride Anazarbeo libri cinque (1544) is an Italian translation, with critical commentary, of Dioscorides classical 1st-century Greek herbal. This important translation served as the basis for the development of modern botany. The work includes extensive annotations and commentary based on Mattioli’s own observations and those of others, carefully detailed illustrations, and plant-name synonyms in several languages.

William Turner (1508 – 1568) was an English naturalist, botanist, and theologian known as the “father of English botany”. He was the author of Libellus de re herbaria novus (1538) the first essay on scientific botany in English. Turner’s Protestant religious beliefs led to several periods of exile to the European continent, during which he studied with, and met, numerous naturalists and learned about contemporary discoveries in botany.

Turner’s best-known work, A New Herbal (in three parts; 1551 – 68), demonstrated his medical bias. He chose to write in English, the vernacular language, so practical botanical and medical knowledge would be widely available to medical practitioners and apothecaries

The Aztec Herbal of (1552) had been in the Vatican’s collection for over four hundred years and was known as the “Liber de medicinalibus indorum herbus” or The Badianus Manuscript (Codex Barberini, Latin 241). The text was originally translated from Aztec language into Latin. Dr. Emily W. Emmart Trueblood, with the assistance of the Herb Society of America, completed a translation of a facsimile translation The Aztec Herbal into English, with commentary, in May, 1966.

Rembert Dodoens (1515/17 – 1585) was a Flemish physician and botanist who wrote the Stirpium historiae pemptades sex in 1583. It is one of the foremost botanical books of the 16th century. His Cruydeboek of 1554 is an extensive herbal that owes a great deal to the “German fathers of botany”; especially Leonhard Fuchs. Dodoens grouped his plants by their properties and reciprocal affinities.

Henry Lyte’s English translation of Dodoens’s Cruydeboek in 1578 entitled, “A Niewe Herball or Historie of Plantes” became a standard in England. The English translation also became the basis for John Girard’s celebrated “Herball” of 1597.

John Girard (1545 – 1612) was the English author of The Herball, or generall historie of plantes (1597). His “Herball” was based on a translation of Stirpium historiae pemptades sex (1583) by the Flemish botanist Rembert Dodoens. Of the more than 1,800 woodcuts illustrating the book, only 16 were done by Gerard. The remainder came from Jacob Theodorous Tabernaemontanus, Eicones plantarum seu stirpium (1590).

Written in wonderful Elizabethan prose, The Herball was immensely popular. It provided information about 800 species as they were then understood including common and botanical names, descriptions of habitats, time of flowering, and the “virtues”, or uses, of plants of the entire plant kingdom. It also contained a large amount of folklore.

John Parkinson (1567 – 1650) is the author of Paradisi in sole paradisus terrestris (1629). The words “Paradisi in sole” is a Latinization of Parkinson’s name and deliberately forms a pun upon it. He is one of the last herbalists who occasionally descends into medievalism. For example, he is eloquent on the subject of the rare and precious commodity of the horn of the unicorn, which is the cure for many bodily ills.

Nicholas Culpeper (1616 – 1654) was an astrologer physician who aroused the indignation of the medical profession by publishing in 1649 under the name of A Physicall Directory, an unauthorized English translation of the Pharmacopoeia, which was issued by the London College of Physicians. Culpeper’s intention was to make this knowledge of medicine more widely available to the common man. That Culpeper was highly unpopular is hardly unsurprising when he speaks of the physicians in his book as “a company of proud, insulting, domineering Doctors, whose wits were born above five hundred years before themselves”. He goes on to ask—“Is it hansom and wel-beseeming a Common-wealth to see a Doctor ride in State, in Plush with footcloath, and not a grain of Wit but what was in print before he was born?”

Elizabeth Blackwell (1700 – 1758) is the author of A Curious Herbal (1737 – 1739). Elizabeth published her herbal to keep her husband Alexander Blackwell (1709 – 47), from debtor’s prison. He was described as a “…self-styled handsome rascal”.

To compensate for her lack of botanical knowledge, Elizabeth relocated near to Chelsea Physick Garden so she could draw new plants under cultivation with the assistance of the curator of the garden. She would then bring the illustration to her husband’s cell where he supplied the names in Latin, Greek, Italian, Spanish and German. Elizabeth then proceeded to engrave the copper plates for 500 images and hand-colored each of the printed illustrations. The first printing of A Curious Herbal was a great success – not for its scientific illustrations -- but for the great need for an updated herbal.

Income from the book soon purchased her husband’s release from prison; however, he again found himself in debt and was forced to sell some of the publication rights to the book. Alexander then moved to Sweden leaving Elizabeth and his family in England. He then became embroiled in a conspiracy to alter the Swedish line of succession and was condemned to death by hanging in 1747. Elizabeth remained loyal to Alexander until his death paying him royalties from the book even though he never sent for his family. Elizabeth died in 1758.

William Woodville (1752 – 1805) was an English physician and botanist who lived and practiced medicine in London. He published his first volume of Medical Botany in 1790 and was made a Fellow of the Linnaean Society an honor directly related to his work. The illustrations in his book were nearly all drawn from living plants or herbarium specimens by James Sowerby (1757 – 1822).

Bea and Bill Jennings, Herb Garden Docent Co-Chairs