Hunt Institute Archives Text Discovery Platform

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Herbals are books about plants, more especially, their use in treating man's physical ills. They often contain illustrations and usually at least some slight description of the plants. Even from the earliest times of Crataeus and Dioskorides, 2000 years ago, they frequently discussed also certain animal and mineral products useful in healing or dietetics, or even cosmetics. Our concern today is briefly to trace their history from ancient times to about 1600. By the beginning of the 17th century their greatest flowering was past and after that they were gradually replaced by more scientific works, by which I mean works based more and more on direct observation and experience. For while it cannot be denied that much herbal knowledge was certainly the distilled observation of clever men of all ages, the herbal does not take second place among ancient, mediaeval and renaissance writings in its constant appeal to the authority of the past and its close connection with the philosophy of the four fundamental qualities, namely, hot and cold, wet and dry. Straight through the 16th century herbals were typically commentaries on Dioskorides who lived and wrote fifteen hundred years before. The amount of genuine botanical knowledge per page was often very small, but the amount of ancient wisdom aduced and the effort to make this eastern Mediterranean lore fit the western European plant world were pretty large. In fact it was not until about 1530 that anyone seriously questioned the identity of the plants of Germany with those to which Dioskorides referred. And the appeal to authority extended to the use of illustration. As late as the early 16th century pictures labelled with local vernacular names were presented in the form of copies of copies of copies to the nth degree of originals made fifteen hundred years before. In fact this was still done as late as 1633 in Johnson's edition of Gerard's Herball.

In the space of forty minutes it is impossible to give more than a brief outline of herbal history. But we can take a look at some eight or ten of the most important authors, note their chief contributions and remark the effect of their work. It happens, by no means incidentally, that the great