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THE WESTERN HERBAL TRADITION
1
CHAPTER 1
The historical sources
In selecting our range of sources for the Renaissance
history of the medicinal use of each of the 27 plants
described in this book, we have first consulted what is
still the standard work on the history of herbals, Ann R.
Arber’s Herbals, their Origins and Evolution: A Chapter in
the History of Botany 1470–1670, first published by Cam-
bridge University Press in 1912. We wish to reflect opin-
ions from a range of European countries. Greece and
Italy have representatives already in the classical texts of
Dioscorides, Pliny and Galen, and the Herbarium of
Pseudo-Apuleius. The medieval Salernitan material from
southern Italy connects with Arabic sources, represented
of course by Ibn Sina but also by Serapio, whose Liber
Aggregatus in Simplicibus Medicinis (1473) is possibly the
earliest herbal to be printed in Europe, and who is
referred to not infrequently by our Renaissance sources.
Mattioli’s commentary from 16th century Italy on Dio-
scorides’ De Materia Medica could not be omitted,
although we have in places augmented views expressed
in this first Latin edition with a later French edition, pub-
lished a century after the Lyon herbal accredited to Dale-
champs, our French representative. Germany’s voices
come from Hildegard and Fuchs and the Swiss-born
Bauhin, while Dodoens speaks for The Netherlands.
Macer’s herbal too comes from north-west Europe. Along
with the English herbals of the period – Turner, Gerard,
Parkinson and Culpeper – we have the books of the phy-
sicians of Myddfai representing Welsh practice. A notable
omission may perhaps be material of Spanish origin, but
we have chosen our herbs from the European tradition,
whereas a major contribution of Spanish texts has been
in describing plants of the New World.
We have benefited from recent translations of Diosco-
rides, the Old English Herbarium, Hildegard’s Physica, a
15th century version of the Salernitan herbal and a new
edition of Turner’s herbal, and have drawn on older stand-
ards such as W. H. S. Jones’ translation of Pliny and a
translation of the books of the physicians of Myddfai. For
other texts we have made our own translations of the
original Latin, French, German and Russian. We have used
the translation of Dioscorides by Beck throughout
the book and thus have relied on her substantial
scholarship.
MODERN SOURCES
We consulted modern texts because they reflect current
usage and have a role in the transmission of knowledge.
For each herb, online scientific databases and reference
lists in published papers were searched. The search for
randomized controlled trials was fruitless in many cases.
Points arising from in vitro research are discussed
where relevant to themes in the monographs but animal
studies on the effectiveness of herbs have not been
discussed. The searches were completed in early 2009,
and all web addresses given were updated after January
2009.
The primary sources given below are used throughout
the book and are not referenced in the text.
TIMELINE OF AUTHORIAL SOURCES
Greco-Roman
Dioscorides fl. 50–80 AD
Beck LY 2005 Pedanius Dioscorides of Anazarbus: De
materia medica. Olms – Weidmann, Hildesheim.
Osbaldeston T and Wood R 2000 Dioscorides De
Materia Medica. Ibidis Press, Johannesburg.
Pliny the Elder c. 23–79 AD
Jones WHS (trans) 1949–1962 Pliny Natural History, with
an English translation in 10 volumes. William Heine-
mann, London.
Pliny C 1601 The Historie of the World. London.
Galen of Pergamon c. 130–200 AD
Galen C 1543 De Simplicium Medicamentorum Facultati-
bus Libri Undecim. Paris.
Kuhn CG (ed.) 1821–1833 Claudii Galeni opera omnia
20 volumes. C. Cnoblich, Leipzig.
Pseudo-Apuleius 5th century AD
Hunger FWT (ed.) 1935 The herbal of Pseudo-Apuleius
from the ninth century manuscript in the abbey of Monte
Cassino. EJ Brill, Leyden.
Arabic
Ibn Sina (Avicenna) c. 980–1037 AD
Abu Ali ibn Sino 2003 Kanon Vrachebnoj Nauki,10
volumes. Enio, Odessa.
THE WESTERN HERBAL TRADITION
2
William Turner 1509/10–1568
Chapman GTL, Tweedle MN (eds) 1995 A New Herball
by William Turner, part I, vol 1. Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge.
Chapman GTL, McCombie F, Wesencraft A (eds) 1995
A New Herball by William Turner, parts II & III, vol 2.
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Turner W 1551 A New Herball Steven Mierdman,
London. Online. Available: http://library.wellcome.ac.uk/,
Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Rembert Dodoens 1516–1585
Dodoens R 1619 A New Herbal: or Historie of Plants.
London. Online. Available: http://library.wellcome.ac.uk/,
EEBO.
Jacques D’Alechamps 1513–1588
D’Alechamps J 1586 Historia Generalis Plantarum.
Lugdini.
Jean Bauhin 1541–1613
Bauhin J 1650 Historia Plantarum Universalis. Ebroduni.
Online. Available: http://gallica.bnf.fr.
John Gerard c.1545–1612
Gerard J 1975 The Herbal or General History of Plants.
Dover Publications, New York. Online. Available: http://
library.wellcome.ac.uk/, EEBO.
John Parkinson 1566/7–1650
Parkinson J 1640 Theatrum Botanicum or The Theater
of Plants. London. Online. Available: http://library.
wellcome.ac.uk/, EEBO.
Nicholas Culpeper 1616–1654
Culpeper N 1656 The English Physitian. London.
Culpeper N 1669 Pharmacopoeia Londinensis. London.
Culpeper N 1995 Culpeper’s Complete Herbal. Words-
worth Library, Ware, Herts.
18th Century
John Quincy d. 1722
Quincy J 1724 Pharmacopoeia Officinalis & Extem-
poranea. London. Also Online. Available: http://library.
wellcome.ac.uk/, Eighteenth Century Collections Online
(ECCO).
Serapio the Younger (Ibn Wafid)
13th century
Serapio 1479 Liber Serapionis Aggregatus in Medicinis
Simplicibus. Venice.
Anglo-Saxon/Late Middle Ages
The Old English Herbarium c. 1000
Van Arsdall A 2002 Medieval herbal remedies: the Old
English Herbarium and Anglo-Saxon medicine. Routledge,
London.
Macer 9–12th century
Macer 1511 Carmen de Virtutibus Herbarum. Paris.
The Salernitan herbal 12th century
Roberts E, Stearn W (trans) 1984 Livre des Simples
Medecines: Codex Bruxellensis IV.1024 A 15th Century
French Herbal. De Schutter, Antwerp.
Hildegard of Bingen 1098–1179
Throop P (trans) 1998 Hildegard von Bingen’s Physica.
Healing Arts Press, Rochester, VT.
Physicians of Myddfai 14th and
18th centuries
Pughe J 1861 (1993 reprint) The physicians of Myddvai;
Meddygon Myddfai. Llanerch Publishers, Felinfach.
Renaissance/Early Modern
Leonhart Fuchs 1501–1566
Fuchs L 1545 De Historia Stirpium. Basileae.
Meyer F, Trueblood E, Heller J 1999 The Great Herbal
of Leonhart Fuchs. Stanford University Press, CA.
Pietro Andrea Mattioli 1501–1577
Matthioli PA 1554 Petri Andreae Matthioli Medici Senen-
sis Commentarii, in Libros Sex Pedacii Dioscoridis
Anazarbei, De Materia Medica 1554. Venice. Online.
Available: http://gallica.bnf.fr.
Matthioli PA 1680 Les Commentaires de M.P. André
Matthiole, … sur les six livres de la matière médicinale de
Pedacius Dioscoride, … traduits de latin en françois par
M. Antoine Du Pinet … augmentez … d’un Traité de
chymie en abrégé … par un docteur en médecine. Derniere
edition. J.-B. de Ville, Lyons. Online. Available: http://
gallica.bnf.fr.
Chapter
The historical sources | 1 |
THE WESTERN HERBAL TRADITION
3
Wilhelm Pelikan 1893–1981
Pelikan W 1997 Healing Plants: Insights Through
Spiritual Science, vol. 1. Mercury Press, Spring Valley,
New York.
Pelikan W 1962 Heilpflanzenkunde, vol. 2. Verlag am
Goetheanum, Dornach.
Pelikan W 1978 Heilpflanzenkunde, vol. 3. Verlag am
Goetheanum, Dornach.
Rudolf Weiss 1895–1991
Weiss R 1988 Herbal Medicine. Beaconsfield Publishing,
Beaconsfield.
The National Botanic Pharmacopoeia 1921
National Association of Medical Herbalists of Great
Britain 1921 The National Botanic Pharmacopoeia, 2nd
edn. Woodhouse, Cornthwaite, Bradford.
Albert Priest and Lilian Priest
Priest A, Priest L 1982 Herbal Medication. LN Fowler,
London.
British Herbal Pharmacopoeia
BHPA Scientific Committee 1983 British Herbal Pharma-
copoeia. British Herbal Medicine Association, Keighley,
West Yorkshire.
Thomas Bartram 1913–2009
Bartram T 1995 Encyclopaedia of Herbal Medicine. Grace
Publishers, Bournemouth.
21st Century texts
Peter Bradley
Bradley P (ed.) 1992 British Herbal Compendium, vol 1.
British Herbal Medicines Association, Bournemouth.
Bradley P 2006 British Herbal Compendium, vol. 2.
British Herbal Medicines Association, Bournemouth.
Andrew Chevallier
Chevallier A 2001 The Encyclopedia of Medicinal Plants.
Dorling Kindersley, London.
Elizabeth Williamson
Williamson E 2003 Potter’s Herbal Cyclopaedia. CW
Daniel, London.
Joseph Miller d. 1748
Miller J 1722 Botanicum Officinale or A Compendious
Herbal. E Bell, J Senex, W Taylor, J Osborn, London. Also
Online. Available: http://library.wellcome.ac.uk/, ECCO.
John Hill 1714–1775
Hill J 1755 The Useful Family Herbal. London. Also
Online. Available: http://library.wellcome.ac.uk/, ECCO.
William Cullen 1710–1790
Cullen W 1773 Lectures on Materia Medica. T. Lowndes,
London. Online. Available: http://library.wellcome.ac.uk/,
ECCO.
19th Century American and British
Albert Isiah Coffin 1790–1866
Coffin AI 1864 Botanic Guide to Health, 49th edn. Haynes,
Coffin, London.
William Fox
Fox W 1920 The Working-man’s Model Family Botanic
Guide to Health, 22nd edn. W Fox and Sons, Sheffield.
William Cook 1832–1899
Cook W 1869 (1985 reprint) The Physiomedical Dispen-
satory. Eclectic Medical Publications, Oregon.
Finley Ellingwood 1852–1920
Ellingwood F 1919 (1988 reprint) American Materia
Medica, Therapeutics and Pharmacognosy. Eclectic
Medical Publications, Oregon. Online. Available: http://
www.henriettesherbal.com/eclectics/books.html.
20th Century texts
Richard Cranfield Wren
Wren RC 1907 Potter’s Cyclopaedia of Botanical Drugs
and Preparations. Potter & Clarke, London.
Richard Hool
Hool RL 1918 Health from British wild herbs. W H Webb,
Southport.
Maud Grieve 1858 to after 1941
Grieve M 1931 (1984 edn) A Modern Herbal. Penguin
Books, Harmandsworth.
THE WESTERN HERBAL TRADITION
4
sharp herbs; Book III (158 entries) with roots, juices, herbs
and seeds; Book IV (192 entries) with further roots and
herbs; and Book V (162 entries) with wines and minerals.
He rejected both an alphabetical listing of medicinal
agents, and an ordering by action and opposite action.
Instead, he grouped herbs in sequence in the various
books according to their broad physiological effects. The
altering of his arrangement of plants towards an alphabeti-
cal one, which took place perhaps as early as the 3rd
century and is evident in the oldest extant version of his
treatise, the illustrated Juliana manuscript of 512 AD,
shows that Dioscorides’ unexplained insight into shared
therapeutic effects went unrecognized down the ages. He
has much recourse to description by analogy, where one
plant resembles another to a certain extent. The botanical
descriptions were sometimes very short, which has led to
different interpretations and some confusion through the
years, with many debates on accuracy of identification,
and inevitable errors in translation.
This is the time when Pliny was writing his Natural
History, and certain parallel passages between this and the
De Materia Medica confirm the contemporaneity and the
shared sources. It has been argued that one of these could
be a lost text, that of the notable Roman physician Quintus
Sextius Niger, who flourished under the first emperor
Augustus. Dioscorides and Pliny appear to have been
writing quite independently of one another. The date of
writing of De Materia Medica is unknown. Dioscorides
does quote a number of authors but none of these sources
has exact dates. He dedicates the work to Arius of Tarsus,
referring to the ‘enviable mutual friendship’ between Arius
and ‘the excellent Laecanius Bassus’, whom we know to
have been Roman proconsul of Asia in 80 AD.
Dioscorides belonged to no definite philosophical
school. His method was empiricist and he criticized specu-
lation on the causes of the powers of drugs on the body.
He encouraged knowledge based on experience: how a
different climate or location affects the strength of the
plant; when to gather different parts of a plant and how
to store them; and how some retain their medicinal effi-
cacy longer than others.
Dioscorides was a major influence on Galen (2nd
century AD), Oribasius (4th century), Alexander of Tralles
(6th century), Paul of Aegina (7th century), Aetius of
Amida (7th century), Rhazes (9th century) and Ibn Sina
(10th century). The earliest translation of Dioscorides into
Arabic is ascribed to Istafan ibn-Basil between 800 and
830 and the Arabic Dioscorides remains in circulation
today.
Sources
Beck LY 2005 Pedanius Dioscorides of Anazarbus: De
materia medica. Olms – Weidmann, Hildesheim.
Dictionary of scientific biography 1970–80 16 vols.
Charles Scribner, New York.
David Hoffman
Hoffman D 2003 Medical Herbalism: The Science and
Practice of Herbal Medicine. Healing Arts Press, Rochester,
VT.
Christopher Menzies-Trull
Menzies-Trull C 2003 Herbal Medicine Keys to Physio-
medicalism. Faculty of Physiomedical Herbal Medicine,
Newcastle, Staffordshire.
Simon Mills and Kerry Bone
Mills S, Bone K 2005 The Essential Guide to Herbal Safety.
Elsevier, St Louis, Missouri.
Matthew Wood
Wood M 2008 The Earthwise Herbal: a Complete Guide
to Old World Medicinal Plants. North Atlantic Books,
Berkeley CA.
BIOGRAPHIES OF THE EARLIER
AUTHORS AND NOTES ON TEXTS
Dioscorides
Pedanius Dioscorides was born at Anazarbus, which is
northeast of Adana in southeastern Turkey. The name
Pedanius is a Roman name, suggesting that Dioscorides
was a Greek-speaking Roman citizen. He was a physician
and probably served in some capacity with the Roman
legions in Asia Minor. In his five books of the De Materia
Medica, the only work now attributed to Dioscorides, over
600 plants, 35 animal products and 90 minerals are dis-
cussed, by far the largest treatise on drugs in antiquity,
significantly more than in the Hippocratic corpus, and
commended and cited in numerous places by Galen. Dio-
scorides was keen to describe both plants and habitats in
his book. It has been argued that he must have travelled
widely through the Greek-speaking eastern half of the
Roman Empire to gather his knowledge but he will also
have depended on reports. In his preface, he claims that
while much accurate information was passed on by his
forebears, his book surpasses their work, especially in its
organization. His entries include a Greek synonym for the
plant, its origin, habitat and physical characteristics, the
method of preparing it for medicine and a list of thera-
peutic uses, with some mention of harmful side-effects.
Book I (129 entries) deals with aromatics, oils, salves, trees
and shrubs, including liquids, gums and fruits; Book II
(186 entries) with animal parts, cereals and pot herbs and
Chapter
The historical sources | 1 |
THE WESTERN HERBAL TRADITION
5
quoting or using his many sources and his recounting of
myths surrounding a phenomenon without discrimina-
tion has left him open to criticisms of lack of originality.
Yet his importance in tradition remains considerable.
Sources
Dictionary of scientific biography 1970–80 16 vols.
Charles Scribner, New York.
Jones WHS (trans.) 1949–1962 Pliny Natural History,
with an English translation in 10 volumes. William Hein-
emann, London.
Stannard J 1965 Pliny and Roman botany. Isis
56:420–425.
Galen
Galen (the forename Claudius seems to have been
appended in the Renaissance) was born in Pergamon in
129/130 AD and died between 199 and 215 AD. His
stature during his life was so immense, above all owing to
the enormous range of his literary works, that after his
death he was styled ‘divine’. Much is known about Galen’s
life, since he himself followed an ancient tradition of auto-
biography. His father Nikon, an architect and geometer,
gave private lessons in mathematics to his son at an early
age and later arranged for his instruction in philosophy.
At age 16 Galen had to pick a career and a significant
dream indicated that medicine should be his profession.
Galen undertook his studies in medicine for an unusu-
ally extended period of 12 years, first in Pergamon and
later in Smyrna, where he also studied Platonic philoso-
phy, before moving on to Corinth and finally Alexandria,
then the most famous centre of medical training and
research. Galen was seeking to develop his own definitive
approach to the practice of medicine. At the age of 28
Galen returned to Pergamon as physician to the gladiators,
a post which afforded him the opportunity to make some
discoveries in anatomy. Nevertheless, he seems to have
found surgery distasteful and his writings contain little on
general surgery beyond the repair of injuries or suppura-
tions. He was more interested in the medical treatment of
internal diseases and in this his greatest influence was the
Hippocratic writings. Thus he adopted the fourfold scheme
incorporating the four Empedoclean elements and associ-
ated Aristotelian qualities, and the four humours of the
Hippocratic text On the Nature of Man as a fundamental
theoretical basis for medicine.
Galen arrived in Rome in 161 AD, where he speedily set
up a medical practice and made an impression by effecting
several striking cures of influential patients, although it is
interesting to note that Galen had no medical students of
his own and he founded no school of medicine. After a
brief return to Pergamon, he was summoned to Aquileia
by the Empire’s two rulers, Marcus Aurelius and Lucius
Verus. He became physician to Commodus, the young son
Osbaldeston TA, Wood RPA 2000 Dioscorides de
materia medica, being a herbal with many other materials
written in Greek in the first century of the common era.
Ibidis Press, Johannesburg.
Pavord A 2005 The naming of names: the search for
order in the world of plants. Bloomsbury, London.
Riddle J 1985 Dioscorides on pharmacy and medicine.
University of Texas, Austin.
Sadak MM 1979 Notes on the introduction and colo-
phon of the Leiden Manuscript of Dioscorides’ ‘De materia
medica’. International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies
10:345–354.
Scarborough J 1984 Early Byzantine pharmacology.
Dumbarton Oaks Papers, Symposium on Byzantine Medi-
cine 38:213–232.
Scarborough J, Nutton V 1982 The preface of Diosco-
rides’ materia medica: introduction, translation, and com-
mentary. Transactions and studies of the College of
Physicians of Philadelphia 4:187–227.
Pliny the Elder
Gaius Plinius Secundus was born in Como, Italy around
23 AD and died near Pompeii on 25 August 79 AD during
the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, on duty as commander
of the fleet based at Misenum. From the age of 12 he was
educated in Rome and subsequently entered military
command, the main career path open to those of the
equestrian order in Roman society. Pliny completed his
military service by 57–58 AD. He survived the reign of
Nero by retreating to write works of oratory and grammar.
He resumed his career after Vespasian became emperor in
69 AD with a series of appointments, including a post as
financial regulator of a province. He became counsellor to
Vespasian and his son Titus.
Pliny’s only extant work is the 37-book Natural History,
dedicated to Titus in 77 AD, possibly given a final editing
by his nephew, Pliny the Younger, only after his death. It
was an ambitious project since no encyclopaedia of the
whole of nature had previously been attempted. The plan
of the work moved from the cosmos to the earth, with its
animals, vegetables and minerals. Books 12–19 cover
botany, and 20–27 the plant materia medica.
The Natural History was written in an uncritical style,
covering factual material, yet embracing an all-inclusive
method. It proved highly influential in the following cen-
turies, and Pliny’s status throughout the Middle Ages
equalled that of Aristotle, Galen and Dioscorides. With the
development of a critical approach to classical science
from the 15th century, Pliny’s standing began to suffer, as
is evident in the comments of some of our other authors
here, and by modern scholarship. On the one hand, Pliny
discusses early developments in agricultural and related
technological practices alongside dates of introduction
into Italy of foreign plants, and gives the earliest surviving
history of art. On the other hand, a lack of reliability in
THE WESTERN HERBAL TRADITION
6
Scarborough J 1984 Early Byzantine pharmacology.
Dumbarton Oaks Papers, Symposium on Byzantine Medi-
cine. 38:213–232.
Temkin O 1973 Galenism: rise and decline of a medical
philosophy. Cornell University Press, Ithaca.
Pseudo-Apuleius (Apuleius
Platonicus)
The publishing in 1935 of a facsimile copy of The herbal
of Pseudo-Apuleius from a 9th century Latin manuscript
found in the Abbey of Monte Cassino southeast of Rome
(codex Casinensis 97) has made available to modern
scholars one of the early medieval copies of this text. The
herbal is thought to have been written in the 4th or 5th
century AD, although whether in Latin or in Greek is not
known, and the oldest extant manuscript dates from the
6th century. The author of this herbal is unknown but is
certainly not the 1st century Latin writer and student of
Platonic philosophy Lucius Apuleius, author of the Meta-
morphoses (also called The Golden Ass). It has been sug-
gested that the name ‘Apuleius’ was used to suggest
Aesculapius, the Roman God of medicine.
The herbal is a prescription book of 132 herbs with
pictures to indicate the well-known plants to be used. It
was possibly the most practical and most widely used
remedy book in the whole of the Middle Ages. Its popular-
ity is evident from the number of manuscripts still in
existence.
Sources
Hunger FWT 1935 The herbal of Pseudo-Apuleius. EJ Brill,
Leyden.
Van Arsdall A 2002 Medieval herbal remedies: the Old
English Herbarium and Anglo-Saxon medicine. Routledge,
London.
Ibn Sina
Abu Ali Al-Husain ibn Abdallah ibn Sina, known in the
medieval West as Avicenna, was born at Afshana near
Bukhara in present-day Uzbekistan in 980 AD and died at
Hamadan in present-day Iran in 1037. He was known as
‘the prince of physicians’ and was accorded the epithet
‘Galen of Islam’. Like Galen, ibn Sina wrote an autobiog-
raphy. His major medical textbook, the Qanun or Canon
of Medicine, was the most famous medical textbook of all,
both in Arab-speaking countries and in the medieval West.
Ibn Sina was the son of a tax collector. He had memo-
rized the Koran by age 10 then went on to study law,
mathematics, physics and astronomy. He turned to medi-
cine aged 16 and was so brilliant that 2 years later he was
summoned to treat the Samanid prince Nuh ibn Mansur.
He was appointed court physician, which gave him access
of the Emperor, and spent time in his company in various
Italian cities, writing and researching, until 180 AD, when
Commodus became Emperor. This close contact with the
imperial family, both as physician and as socially promi-
nent personality, continued in Rome for two decades and
into the reign of Septimus Severus. In this period Galen
lost a large part of his library to a fire in the Temple of
Peace in 192 AD. It is not known whether Galen spent his
last days in Rome or back home in Pergamon.
Galen’s works were translated into Arabic by Hunain
ibn Ishaq and others in the 9th century in Baghdad and
some challenges to his teachings were made by leading
Arab physicians such as Rhazes when their own medical
experience contradicted Galen’s written view. Other trans-
lations were made of philosophical and mathematical
works from the Greek and Arabic medicine that developed
the philosophical and humoural concepts. Galenism as a
medical system was strengthened in the Christian West
after 1000 AD by translations from Arabic, notably by
Constantine the African in the first instance. The Galenic
system, filtered over the centuries by Byzantine and Arab
reflection, passed across to Western Europe through such
translations.
Developments through the Renaissance and Enlighten-
ment, such as dissections of the human body by Vesalius
and Harvey’s discovery of the circulation of blood, uncov-
ered the necessarily speculative side of Galen’s physiology.
Only Galen’s reputation as a dietician and as a diagnosti-
cian stood firm before the challenges of the Cartesian
division between the mind and the body, Newtonian
mechanics and the new scientific method. His doctrine of
the six non-naturals (diet and lifestyle factors) was the
core of conventional rules of medical hygiene until the
end of the 19th century, while deeply rooted notions of
bad humours and blood purification were commonly
shared at the turn of the 20th century.
As far as his therapeutics is concerned, Galen mixed
empirical testing of the effects of medicines with
speculation on their mode of action, namely the heating,
cooling, drying and moistening effects they might have
on the body. These actions are still integral to Eastern
systems of natural medicine such as Ayurveda and Unani
Tibb, while in Western herbal medicine their prevalence
diminished after the rise of a mechanical philosophy in
the later 17th century. Galen’s rational therapeutics are
found scattered throughout the massive number of books
he wrote, but are principally concentrated in the texts
Mixtures and Properties of Simples, Compound Drugs Arranged
by Location of Ailment and Compound Drugs Arranged by
Indication.
Sources
Dictionary of scientific biography 1970–80 16 vols.
Charles Scribner, New York.
Chapter
The historical sources | 1 |
THE WESTERN HERBAL TRADITION
7
drugs) which was translated into Latin by Abraham of
Tortuso around 1290. Dating of the text is based on its
similarity to the Kitab al-Jami of Ibn al-Baytar, dubbed
chief of botanists in Egypt by the Sultan al-Kamil
Muhammed. Ibn al-Baytar wrote this book some time
before his death in Damascus in 1248. Fuchs used another
translation of the De Simplicibus Medicinis, prepared by
Otto Brunfels and published in Strasbourg in 1531.
Ullmann points out that the Arabic bibliographers have
identified in excess of 100 authors who wrote about
materia medica. Many of these works are compilations.
Dioscorides is the greatest authority for these compilers,
as is evident in our reading of the Liber Aggregatus.
Ibn Rushd, Abū al-Walīd
Muhammad
ibn
Ahma
d
ibn
Muhammad
, known in the medieval West as Averroes
(1126–1198) was born in Cordoba and wrote many texts
including commentaries on Aristotle and the Qur’an.
Many of his works on philosophy and medicine were
translated into Latin.
One of the texts translated by Constantine the African
was the Isagogue, an overview of Galenic humoral theory.
This was written by Johannitius, Human ibn Ishāq (d. 873
or 877). Human ibn Ishāq, a Nestorian Christian who
settled in Baghdad, was the main translator of texts from
Greek into Aramaic and Arabic.
John Mesue (777–857), Masawayh Iohannes Aben
Mesue,
Yuhanna
¯¯
ibn Masawayh, Abū Zakarīyā’, was born
into a family of doctors in Gondishapur, western Iran. He
was a Nestorian Christian and personal doctor to four
caliphs in Baghdad. He wrote a number of monographs
on topics including fevers, leprosy, melancholy, dietetics,
eye diseases, and medical aphorisms. The name Mesuë, or
filius Mesuë, is given to several Latin texts which were not
all written by Mesue.
Simeon Seth (fl. 1070–1080) was master of the imperial
palace in Constantinople and wrote Syntagme de Alimen-
torum Facultatibus, on the medicinal properties of foods. It
was dedicated to the emperor Michael VII, who reigned
from 1071 to 1078. He wrote a treatise on smell, taste and
touch, and another on urine. An edition of Syntagme de
Alimentorum Facultatibus in Greek and Latin was published
in Basel, Switzerland in 1538.
Sources
Conrad LI 1995 The Arab–Islamic medical tradition In:
Lawrence I. Conrad L I, Neve M, Nutton V, et al (eds) The
western medical tradition: 800 BC to AD 1800. Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge.
Gutas D 1998 Greek thought, Arabic culture: the Graeco-
Arabic translation movement in Baghdad and early
‘Abbasid society. Routledge, London.
Meyer F, Trueblood EE, Heller JL 1999 The great herbal
of Leonhart Fuchs vol 1, commentary. Stanford University
Press, CA.
to the royal library at Bukhara. He twice served as vizier
to the Buyid prince at Hamadan in western Iran but had
to move a number of times in his life because of political
upheavals. He wrote 40 books, half of which dealt with
medicine and others on philosophy, science, poetry,
music and statecraft.
The Canon of Medicine summarized the Hippocratic-
Galenic tradition and included Syro-Arab and Indo-
Persian practice. He discussed around 760 herbal
medicines, which are largely contained in book two of the
Canon. The Canon drew on the work of Rhazes (Muham-
mad ibn Zakariyya al-Razi, died 925 AD), an earlier fellow
philosopher-doctor. The Canon was translated into Latin
in the 12th century by Gerard of Cremona (d. 1187) with
another version by Andrea Alpago (d. 1522). It was used
as a textbook of medicine throughout the Middle Ages and
continued to be used in the Renaissance alongside Latin
translation of Greek works. It was used at the University
of Montpellier until 1657 and continues in use today as
the vademecum of Unani Tibb medicine.
Sources
Conrad LI 1995 The Arab-Islamic medical tradition In:
Lawrence I. Conrad LI, Neve M, Nutton V, et al (eds) The
western medical tradition: 800 BC to AD 1800. Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge.
Dictionary of scientific biography 1970–80 16 vols.
Charles Scribner, New York.
Nasr SH 1976 Islamic science: an illustrated study.
World of Islam Festival Publishing Company, Westerham,
Kent.
Shah MH 1966 The general principles of Avicenna’s
cannon of medicine. Naveed Clinic, Karachi.
Siraisi NG 1987 Avicenna in Renaissance Italy: The
canon and medical teaching in Italian universities after
1500. Princeton University Press.
Tschanz DW 2003 Arab roots of European medicine.
Heart Views 4:69–80.
Ullmann M 1997 Islamic medicine. Edinburgh Univer-
sity Press, Edinburgh.
Serapio the Younger, and other
texts quoted in the primary
sources Averroes, Johannitius,
Mesue and Seth
Serapio was styled ‘the younger’ so as to avoid confusion
with Serapio the elder, who was Yuhanna ibn Sarabiyun,
one of the last exponents of classical Syriac medical writing
and one of the influential authors for the development of
medical theory and practice in 9th century Baghdad.
However, the author of Liber Aggregatus in Medicinis
Simplicibus (Venice 1479) is thought to be Ibn Wafid, who
wrote the Kitab al-Adwiya al-mufrada (book on simple
THE WESTERN HERBAL TRADITION
8
than a monk, and possibly a medical practitioner because
of his occasional observations. The work, it is suggested,
derives much information from Pliny, or else his material
as it appeared in the writings of the Roman botanical
writer Gargilius Martialis.
Sources
Frick G (ed.) 1949 A Middle English translation of Macer
Floridus De viribus herbarum. Almqvist & Wiksells,
Uppsala.
Flood BP 1977 Pliny and the Medieval ‘Macer’ medical
text. Journal of the History of Medicine, 32:395–402.
The Salernitan herbal
The School of Salerno is commonly regarded as the earliest
university of medieval Europe. At its origin in the second
half of the 10th century in a main political and ecclesiasti-
cal centre of southern Italy, the doctors practicing there,
many of whom were clerics, had already built up a reputa-
tion for their practical skills and successful treatments. The
school achieved great importance as a centre of medical
teaching and practice in the 11–13th centuries, with an
established emphasis on practical instruction in contrast
to the scholasticism of the later universities. Despite its
relative decline after this time, the school continued to
exist until 1812. Two famous names connected with the
school are those of Constantine the African and Trotula.
Constantine was a Muslim from North Africa who
arrived in Salerno perhaps as early as 1065, apparently,
according to the account of a Salernitan doctor a century
later, as a merchant on a visit to the Lombard prince of
Salerno. Finding that they did not have a Latin medical
literature, he returned to North Africa and 3 years later
came back with a number of medical texts in Arabic,
which he proceeded to translate. Constantine was the first
important figure in the transmission of Greco-Arabic
science to the Latin West. His works show signs of having
been written in the Abbey of Monte Cassino, where,
having become a Christian, he joined the Benedictine
community. He died around 1087.
A group of his translations combined as the Articella
formed the basis of university medical education through-
out the Middle Ages. He translated two compendia: the
Viaticum, from a work by Ibn al-Jazzar (d. 1009), and the
Pantegni, his version of the Kitab al-maliki of Ali ibn
al-Abbas (Haly Abbas, d. 994) and other works, including
the Hippocratic Aphorisms and Prognostica and the treatise
on acute diseases, both with the commentaries of Galen.
In 1075 Salerno became a Norman duchy, which led to
contacts in particular with Paris and, although there are
conflicting views on the real nature of the school and the
means of transmission of knowledge, the medical school
influenced medical practice throughout Europe through
commentaries on Galenic and other texts.
National Library of Medicine 2008 Islamic medical
manuscripts. Online. Available: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/
hmd/arabic/welcome.html 7 Sept 2009.
Pormann P E 2004 Yuhanna ibn Sarabiyun: further
studies into the transmission of his works. Arabic Sciences
and Philosophy 14: 233–262.
Riddle J 1985 Dioscorides on pharmacy and medicine.
University of Texas, Austin.
Sadak MM 1979 Notes on the introduction and colo-
phon of the Leiden Manuscript of Dioscorides’ ‘De materia
medica’. International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies
10:345–354.
Ullmann M 1997 Islamic medicine. Edinburgh Univer-
sity Press, Edinburgh.
Medieval medicine
Medieval medicine can be divided into two periods: that
of the 6th to 9th centuries AD, dominated by post-Galenic
writers, and that from the 10th to the 15th centuries when,
though still strongly influenced by Galen, a Christianisa-
tion of medicine appears as monasteries became centres
of learning and of herbal medicine.
An Old English translation of the Herbal of Pseudo-
Apuleius was the first illustrated English herbal. Expanded
to discuss 185 plants by the inclusion of the treatise on
betony Stachys officinalis by Antonius Musa, physician to
the Roman Emperor Augustus, and by some recipes from
the pseudo-Dioscoridean Ex Herbis Femininis, it is one of
four large medical texts surviving in the vernacular writ-
ings of Anglo-Saxon England. These writings are unique
in northern Europe, and are the only surviving evidence
of medical practice north of the Alps before 1100 AD. They
are testimony to the importance of medicine to the
Anglo-Saxons.
Macer’s herbal
Macer is the name on the title page of the first herbal
printed by moveable type, the De Viribus Herbarum of
1477. Our edition dates from 1511. The book is an old
Latin poem of over 2000 lines of hexameters which
describes the healing powers of 77 plants. It is thought to
have been written sometime between 849 and 1112 AD,
probably in the 11th century. Details are given of the
name of the herb and its temperature plus some recipes
with occasional dosages. It was popular in the Middle Ages
as the many surviving manuscripts testify. More than 100
of its verses found their way into the Salernitan Regimen
Sanitatis.
The author, Macer Floridus, is a pseudonym in honour
of Aemilius Macer, the Roman poet who died around 16
BC and who may also have composed a botanical work.
The real writer is thought by some to be the poet Odo of
Meung from the Loire region of France, a layman rather
Chapter
The historical sources | 1 |
THE WESTERN HERBAL TRADITION
9
she had had visions before, these became grander and
filled with significance, which she began to describe in her
first book Scivias (Know The Ways). After 1151 she
founded her own convent at Rupertsberg. From 1151 to
1158 she worked on the Liber Simplicus Medicinae, com-
prising nine books on plants, metals, animals, reptiles,
diet, stones and humours. She had a deep faith in the
value of the parts of God’s creation. Her works were not
available for many years but indirectly influenced German
books of household management. Further editions of her
work have been discovered in the 1980s.
The text which we used is a translation of an edition
published in 1882 of a 15th century manuscript held in
Paris, Cod. 6952 and containing 230 plant medicines.
Sources
Adamson MW 1995 A reevaluation of Saint Hildegard’s
physica in light of the latest manuscript finds. In: Schleiss-
ner MR (ed.) 1995 Manuscript sources of medieval medi-
cine. Garland, New York, pp 55–80.
Strehlow W, Hertzka G 1988 Hildegard of Bingen’s
medicine. Bear, Santa Fe, New Mexico.
The Myddfai physicians
We include another collection of vernacular writings from
the British Isles, namely those attributed to the family of
healers famous for their cures in the Myddfai region of
South Wales.
The English translation of Meddygon Myddfai contains
three sections: Book 1 is a translation of a Welsh manu-
script transcribed at the end of the 14th century, Book 2
is a collection of medical texts handed down in the family
and transcribed before 1743, and Book 3 is an account of
the legend of LLyn-y-van-vach.
Book 1 formed part of the Red Book of Hergest (LLyfr
Coch Hergest, Jesus MS 111), a substantial collection of
Welsh literature and poetry and European material such
as Aristotle’s advice to Alexander. The texts on medicine
are thought to have been transcribed not long after 1382.
The scribe was Hywel Fychan ap Hywel Goch of Buellt,
working with two assistants, and the compilation was
made for Hopcyn ap Tomas (1330 to after 1403), who
was a patron of bards and collector of manuscripts. This
is a mixture of short treatises compiled for practical pur-
poses of the sort first written in Greek in the 4th century
and translated into Latin in the 6th century. There are sec-
tions, for instance, on the four elements and humours, the
importance of knowledge of the 12 signs of the zodiac,
seven enemies of the eye, and fevers and their treatment.
The first paragraph of Book 1 states that it was written
by Rhiwallon, physician to Rhys Gryg (d. 1233), king of
Deheubarth, Southwest Wales. Rhiwallon had three sons
Cadwgan, Gruffudd (Griffith) and Einoin, who became
doctors, and Book 2 claims that there was an unbroken
Trotula’s name has passed down the centuries as that of
a woman healer at Salerno who wrote a famous treatise
on gynaecology. Recent scholarship has shown that the
text is actually composed of three separate works, different
in style, content and approach to theory and practice, on
cosmetics, conditions of women and treatments of
women.
What is considered to be the herbal of the School of
Salerno is the manuscript Circa Instans of Matthaeus
Platearius, possibly the son of Johannes Platearius, who
died in 1161. Additions of other medicinal plants were
made in the copying of the original manuscript, and later
versions also included chapters on food from a 10th
century treatise on dietetics by Ishaq Ibn Sulaiman al-Israeli
(Isaac Judaeus) translated by Constantine the African as
the Liber Diaetarum universalium et particularium.
One such later herbal containing these cumulative alter-
ations is the 15th century French manuscript Livre des
Simples Medicines (Codex Bruxellensis IV 1024), also
known as the Secreta Salernitana, Livre des Secres de
Salerne, Arboriste, Arbolayre and Grant Herbier en Fran-
coys. It was translated into English as The Grete Herball,
which was published in London in 1526.
Sources
Dictionary of scientific biography (1970–80) 16 vols.
Charles Scribner, New York.
Garica-Ballester L 1994 Introduction: practical medicine
from Salerno to the Black Death. In: Garcia-Ballester L
(ed.) Practical medicine from Salerno to the Black Death.
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 1–29.
Gottfried RS 1986 Doctors and medicine in medieval
England 1340–1530. Princeton University Press.
Green M (ed.) 2001 The Trotula. University of Pennsyl-
vania Press, Philadelphia.
Gutas D 1998 Greek thought, Arabic culture: the
Graeco-Arabic translation movement in Baghdad and
early ‘Abbasid society. Routledge, London.
Kristeller PO 1945 The school of Salerno. Bulletin of the
History of Medicine 17:138–194.
Nutton V 2003 Book review: Monica H. Green The
Trotula: a medical compendium of women’s medicine.
Medical History 47:136–137.
Roberts E, Stearn W (trans.) 1984 Livre des simples
medecines: Codex Bruxellensis IV.1024 a 15th century
French herbal. De Schutter, Antwerp.
Hildegard of Bingen
Hildegard was born in 1098 into an aristocratic family
in Bernersheim near Alzey in Rheinhessen. At the age
of 8, she joined the Benedictine cloister at nearby Disibod-
enberg, which had been founded in the 7th century by the
Irish monk Disibod. Hildegard became a nun at the age
of 16 and was elected abbess in 1136. In 1141, although
THE WESTERN HERBAL TRADITION
10
Van Arsdall A 2002 Medieval herbal remedies: the Old
English Herbarium and Anglo-Saxon medicine. Routledge,
London.
Voigts L 1979 Anglo-Saxon plant remedies and the
Anglo-Saxons. Isis 70:250–268.
Welsh Biography Online 2007 Hopcyn ap Tomas.
Online. Available: http://yba.llgc.org.uk 17 May 2008.
RENAISSANCE HERBALS
Leonhart Fuchs
Fuchs was born on 17 January 1501 at Wemding in
Bavaria. At the age of 15 he was studying for an arts degree
at the University of Erfurt. He went on to take a medical
degree at Ingolstadt University and worked as a doctor in
Munich before returning to Ingolstadt in 1526 to take up
the chair of medicine. Two years later he was called to
Ansbach by the fellow protestant Prince Georg, the Mar-
grave of Brandenburg, to set up a protestant university in
the town. The plan never materialized but Fuchs remained
the Margrave’s personal physician, enhancing his reputa-
tion by successfully treating sufferers of the sweating sick-
ness (the ‘English Sweat’) which was sweeping through
Germany in 1529. He was then called to Tübingen by
Ulrich, Duke of Wurttemberg, to reform its university
along humanistic lines, and spent the rest of his life there,
as professor of medicine, until his death in 1566.
Fuchs has become known as one of the three founding
fathers of German botany, alongside Hieronymus Bock
(latinised as Tragus) and Otto Brunfels. All three authors
shared a protestant faith. Fuchs founded one of the first
German botanical gardens, where he offered botanical
study for students. He did not travel to further his studies,
being interested rather in native German plants, but he
took part in the rapidly developing network of scholars
throughout Europe who shared their knowledge and
exchanged plants. Religious beliefs were not always
accommodated and Fuchs and Mattioli clashed across the
religious divide on academic matters.
As a humanist and man of the Renaissance, Fuchs wanted
to draw from what he perceived as the original well of
knowledge on plants and medicine, the Greeks. In Tübin-
gen, he opposed the continuing use of Avicenna. His first
publication in 1530, Errata Recentiorum Medicorum (Errors
of Recent Doctors), advocated a return to the use of simples
rather than the compound mixtures of arcane ingredients in
medieval prescribing. His great work is the herbal, De Histo-
ria Stirpium Commentarii Insignes of 1542, translated into
German, Dutch and English. Here Fuchs tried to identify the
plants described by classical authors. He covers 400 wild
and 100 domesticated plants, all medicinal, drawn mainly
from Dioscorides. For each he provided their various names,
a description and the place and time that they may be found.
descent in Myddfai from Rhiwallon, via his son Einoin to
John Jones, surgeon (1697–1793). There are records of
medical services being provided by freeholders in Myddfai
to the Lord of Llandovery.
Book 2 is a collection of medical texts collected by
Howel the physician, a descendant of Einion, translated
from a Welsh version held by John Jones, surgeon. It was
copied by William Bona in 1743 and translated into
English by John Pughe, surgeon, on behalf of the Welsh
Manuscript Society in 1861.
The editors of the text append a story to account for the
medical knowledge of the family. The legend of Llyn-y-
van-vach which follows was written down in 1841 by
William Rees of Tonn near Llandovery using the oral state-
ments of three local people. In the late 1100s a man was
looking after cattle near Myddfai when he saw a beautiful
woman on the lake. He offered her baked bread, which
she refused and then dived under the water. On the second
day, he offered her unbaked bread, which was again
refused, so his mother suggested moderately baked bread,
and on the third day she approached the land and accepted
his offer. Then she dived back into the water and reap-
peared with her sister and her father, who stated that the
man could marry her as long as he could distinguish her
from her sister. This appeared impossible until one woman
moved her foot and he recalled that their sandals were tied
in different ways. The father warned that if he struck his
bride three times without cause, she would return to the
lake, taking back her dowry of cattle, goats and sheep. The
couple prospered and had three sons but he struck her
unintentionally whilst preparing to go to a christening,
then at a wedding feast and lastly at a funeral gathering.
She promptly called her cattle and disappeared back into
the lake. The sons used to go to the lake in the hope of
meeting their mother and one day she appeared and told
the eldest son, Rhiwallon, that his mission was to benefit
mankind by healing all manner of disorders. She gave him
a bag of medical prescriptions and instructions for the
preservation of health. His mother appeared again, and
while walking back towards their home pointed out herbs
which grew nearby and their virtues.
Sources
Cameron ML 1993 Anglo-Saxon medicine. Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge.
Huws D 2000 Medieval Welsh manuscripts. University
of Wales Press, Cardiff.
Owen ME 1975 Meddygon Myddfai: a preliminary
survey of some Medieval medical writings in Welsh. Studia
Celtica 10–11:210–233.
Pughe J 1861, 1993 The physicians of Myddvai; Meddy-
gon Myddfai. Llanerch Publishers, Felinfach.
Thomas PW, Smith DM, Luft D 2007 Rhyddiaith
Gymraeg 1350–1425. Online. Available: http://www.
rhyddiaithganoloesol.caerdydd.ac.uk 17 May 2008.
Chapter
The historical sources | 1 |
THE WESTERN HERBAL TRADITION
11
lifetime, Mattioli added new plant descriptions and depic-
tions to each subsequent edition, as new specimens and
seeds were received from ambassadors and other contacts
outside Europe. His Commentarii continued to be printed
regularly into the 18th century.
Mattioli was invited to act as physician at the court of
the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I and he later served
Maximilian II. Such a wealthy patron gave him many con-
tacts, including the ambassador in Constantinople, Ogier
Ghiselin de Busbecq, the man responsible for the removal
of the Juliana Anicia Codex from Constantiniple. Mattioli
consulted this in preparing his 1568 edition. He died of
plague in Trento in 1577.
Sources
Findlen P 1999 The formation of a scientific community:
natural history in sixteenth-century Italy. In: Grafton A,
Siraisi N (eds) 1999 Natural particulars: nature and the
disciplines in Renaissance Europe. MIT Press, Cambridge,
MA.
Dictionary of scientific biography 1970–80 16 vols.
Charles Scribner, New York.
Pavord A 2005 The naming of names: the search for
order in the world of plants. Bloomsbury, London.
William Turner
Turner was born in Morpeth, Northumberland in around
1508 and educated there. He studied at Pembroke Hall,
Cambridge from 1525 and graduated MA in 1533. His
education was influenced by humanist ideals and study of
the Greek New Testament and Latin texts. In 1538 he
published the Libellus de Re Herbaria, his only book written
in Latin. This was republished in an expanded form in
English, the Names of Herbes in 1548 and joined the
English names of plants to the list of names appearing in
the European herbals. Turner was aware that most 16th
century medical practitioners, herbalists and apothecaries
had no knowledge of Latin and so could not read a herbal
like Fuchs’ to access detailed observations on the appear-
ance and habitat of medicinal plants. Other herbals
written in English, such as Banckes’ herbal of 1525 and
the Grete Herball of 1526, were translations of earlier
medieval works.
He left England in 1540, travelling in Germany, France,
Switzerland and Italy. He studied under Luca Ghini in
Bologna and obtained his MD in medicine either in
Bologna or Ferrara, Italy. On his way back he visited
Conrad Gesner in Zurich, with whom he was to have a
lifelong correspondence, and began to practice medicine
in Holland, remaining for 4 years in East Friesland as
personal physician to the Earl of Emden. Turner was a
fervent Protestant and during his period in exile wrote two
books opposing ‘Romish’ practices, which were banned
and publicly burned in 1546.
He added the plant’s temperament, its degree of heat, cold,
dryness and moisture in the system first proposed by Galen,
and its medicinal properties according to Dioscorides, Pliny
and Galen. This was augmented by statements from Simeon
Seth, from more recent sources and current medical practice
or occasionally his own comments. Accompanying the text
are 512 woodcut illustrations of plants of very high techni-
cal quality by Plantin, of Antwerp, which set new standards
in book illustration.
Sources
Fuchs L 1545 (1980 reprint) Holzschnitte die historischen
Taschenbücher. Konrad Kölbl, Grünwald bei München.
Kusukawa S 1996 Leonhart Fuchs on the importance of
pictures. Journal of the History of Ideas 58:403–427.
Pavord A 2005 The naming of names: the search for
order in the world of plants. Bloomsbury, London.
Reeds KM 1976 Renaissance humanism and botany.
Annals of Science 33:519–542.
Sangwine E 1978 The private libraries of Tudor doctors.
Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences
33:167–184.
Pietro Andrea Gregorio Mattioli
Mattioli was born in Siena, Italy on 12 March 1501 and
followed his father into medicine, receiving his degree at
the University of Padua in 1523. While developing his
skills in surgery in Perugia and Rome (some credit him
with the first description of syphilitic buboes of the groin),
he made direct observations of herbs and plants, and
developed a specific interest in the identification of medic-
inal herbs in Greek and Roman texts. After Rome was
sacked in 1527, Mattioli became personal physician to the
bishop of Trento until 1539, when he was appointed city
physician at Gorizia in northeast Italy.
In 1544 Mattioli published in Venice an Italian version
of Dioscorides’ De Materia Medica, based on a Latin trans-
lation from the Greek of Dioscorides by Jean Ruel pub-
lished in Paris in 1516, with a commentary, the Di Pedacio
Dioscoride Anazarbeo libri cinque dell’istoria e material medici-
nale, tradotto in lingua volgare italiana da M.P. Andrea Mat-
thioli sanese medico, con amplissime annotationi et censure, to
help doctors and apothecaries identify the herbs described.
These medical and botanical aims of the commentary were
unusual for the time. The book was immediately success-
ful and made its author famous. Mattioli then published
a new version in Latin in 1554, Commentarii in Libros Sex
Pedacii Dioscoridis Anazarbei, with synonyms of plant
names in different languages, a special commentary and
accurate illustrations which were reproductions of his own
drawings or elaborations of those of other authors, notably
Luca Ghini. New editions with commentaries incorporat-
ing comments from other botanists and criticizing other
authorities made the book a big seller. During his long
THE WESTERN HERBAL TRADITION
12
Dodoens graduated as a licentiate in medicine from the
catholic University of Louvain, Belgium in 1535. He trav-
elled extensively, as was the custom, through France, Italy
and Germany. He worked on a Latin and Greek text of
Paul of Aegina published in Basel in 1546.
In 1548 he returned to the place of his birth to work as
one of three municipal physicians, and began work on the
Cruydeboek. It was finished by 1552 and published early
in 1554 by Jean Vanderloe of Antwerp. His most impor-
tant scientific work was the Stirpium historiae pemptades sex
sive libri XXX of 1583. A translation of this book formed
the basis of Gerard’s herbal. In 1574, he took up an
appointment as physician to the Emperor Maximilian II
in Vienna, where Charles de l’Ecluse was in charge of the
Imperial Botanic Garden. He remained there as physician
to Maximilian’s successor, Rudolph II, until 1580, when
he attempted to return to Malines but because of political
turmoil, he lived in Cologne and then Antwerp.
Dodoens’ last appointment in 1582 was in the Faculty
of Medicine at the University of Leiden. The famous
botanical gardens there were created 2 years after his death
in 1585 by Charles de l’Ecluse.
Sources
Dictionary of scientific biography 1970–80 16 vols.
Charles Scribner, New York.
Pavord A 2005 The naming of names: the search for
order in the world of plants. Bloomsbury, London.
Reeds KM 1991 Botany in medieval and Renaissance
universities. Garland, New York.
Van Meerbeeck PJ 1841, 1980 Recherches historiques et
critiques sur la via et les ouvrages de Rembert Dodoens.
HES, Utrecht.
Jean Bauhin
Jean Bauhin, the ‘German Pliny’, was born in Basel, Swit-
zerland on 12 February 1541, the oldest of seven children.
His father was Jean Bauhin, a physician to Margaret of
Navarre until exiled from France through religious perse-
cution. His younger brother, Gaspard, compiled the Pinax
theatri botanici (1623).
Bauhin was educated in Basel with visits to foreign uni-
versities, including Montpellier in 1561–1562. There is no
evidence that he received an MD from the Montpellier
school of medicine in 1562, but in 1563 he established
himself in medical practice in Lyon, where he was soon
treating plague victims. Driven into exile like his father, in
1568 he moved to Geneva, where he continued in medical
practice. He spent a short period teaching in Basel before
being appointed physician to Duke Frederick, ruler of
Wurttemberg-Montbeliard in 1571.
Bauhin’s main interest in his youth was botany, which
benefited from the influence of his teacher and friend,
Conrad Gesner. Gesner was compiling a Historia plantarum,
Turner returned to England on the death of Henry VIII
in 1547 to practice medicine and divinity and was doctor
and chaplain to the Lord Protector, Duke of Somerset at
Syon House until 1549 when Somerset was arrested.
Turner was appointed Dean of Wells Cathedral in 1551
but when the Catholic Mary I became Queen, Turner once
again went into exile, and travelled in Germany between
1553 and 1558. On the succession to the throne of Eliza-
beth I in 1558, he returned to England and resumed the
post of Dean of Wells Cathedral in 1561, where he courted
opprobrium for his opposition to priestly vestments. He
died in London in 1568 and is buried at St Olave’s, Hart
Street.
A New Herball was published in three parts, the first in
London in 1551, the second in Cologne, Germany in 1562
and an addendum in 1568. Turner provided the first clear
and systematic survey of English plants, including around
400 woodcuts, mainly those used in Fuch’s De Historia
Stirpium, and detailed observations from his own field
studies. The published third part contained a revision of
the first two parts.
Turner has been called the ‘Father of English Botany’ as
his education led him to introduce the study of plants in
a scientific manner in the English language. Two hundred
and thirty-eight native British plants are described and, in
common with European writers, he quotes directly from
sources such as Galen. The religious and political turmoil
of the time led to his work being published in Cologne
and it was neither translated nor reprinted until the fac-
simile edition of 1995.
Sources
Dictionary of national biography. Oxford University Press,
Oxford. Online. Available: http://www.oxforddnb.com.
Chapman GTL, Tweedle MN (eds) 1995 A new herball
by William Turner, part I, vol 1. Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge.
Chapman GTL, McCombie F, Wesencraft A (eds) 1995
A new herball by William Turner, parts II & III, vol 2.
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Pavord A 2005 The naming of names: the search for
order in the world of plants. Bloomsbury, London.
Sangwine E 1978 The private libraries of Tudor doctors.
Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences
33:167–184.
Rembert Dodoens
Rembert van Joenckema was the real name of the author
of the Cruydeboek of 1554 but he was known to an English
readership as Rembert Dodoens, author of A New Herbal
or Historie of Plants translated by Henry Lyte, published in
London in 1619. He was born in Mechelen in The Neth-
erlands, now Malines in Belgium, on 29 June 1516 and
died at Leiden in The Netherlands on 10 March 1585.
Chapter
The historical sources | 1 |
THE WESTERN HERBAL TRADITION
13
introduction and index, is divided into three books. Book
1 covers monocotyledons. Book 2 takes up most of the
rest of the text in describing of herbs used as food, medi-
cine and perfumes. The final book of 315 pages contains
a miscellany of trees, shrubs and other plants used for
medicine. His vivid use of words to describe plants, famil-
iar or never before seen by his readers, made his herbal
accessible and it was widely distributed thanks to the
growing number of booksellers in England at this time.
There is debate over the 1597 version as Gerard recog-
nized in his preface to the Herball that there were faults,
some due to his ‘limited erudition that someone of greater
learning might later correct’, but he hoped the reader
would take well his good intention in publishing. Yet after
his death and on account of the herbal his reputation was
tarnished with the accusation of plagiarism. The publisher
of the herbal, John Norton, had asked Matthias de l’Obel
to check the edition before printing and de l’Obel discov-
ered many errors in the text and the naming of the plant
illustrations, which he dealt with as best he could. A
further concern is the claim that much of Gerard’s work
was based on a translation by Robert Priest, a London
doctor, of Dodoens’ Stirpium historiae pemptades sex. Priest
died in 1596 or 1597, and this claim does not detract from
value of the text and will be finally solved by a critical
edition of the texts.
The text which we use is the 1633 second edition,
revised and edited by Thomas Johnson, which has been
regularly reprinted. Johnson was an avid botanist and
member of the Society of Apothecaries, and inserted new
illustrations from the stock of Plantin, a printer in Antwerp
(Museum Plantin-Moretus 2010). Johnson adds his own
comments in a structured way, which helps the reader to
understand the debate over the identity of plants in pre-
Linnean botany. In a legal document concerning a lease
to Gerard of a garden adjoining Somerset House by Anne
of Denmark, consort of James I, he was described as ‘her-
barist’ to James I. He died in February 1612 and was
buried in Holborn.
Sources
Arber AR 1986 Herbals, their origins and evolution: a
chapter in the history of botany 1470–1670, 3rd edn.
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Dictionary of national biography. Oxford University
Press, Oxford. Online. Available: http://www.
oxforddnb.com.
Dictionary of scientific biography 1970–80 16 vols.
Charles Scribner, New York.
Harkness DE 2007 The jewel house: Elizabethan
London and the scientific revolution. Yale University
Press, New Haven.
Museum Plantin-Moretus 2010 Online. Available:
http://museum.antwerpen.be/plantin_Moretus/index_
eng.html
an intended companion to his already famous Historia
animalium, and up until his death in 1565 he corresponded
with Bauhin. Bauhin sent him plant specimens which
Bauhin had come across on his travels and accompanied
him in 1561 on a novel study of alpine flora in the Rha-
etian Alps. Gesner sent Bauhin on to Tübingen to study
with Leonhard Fuchs. Somewhere around 1564 Bauhin
planted his first garden in Lyon with the collaboration of
Jacques D’Alechamps, the recognized author of the anony-
mous Historia plantarum generalis of 1586. Bauhin’s own
herbal, the Historia plantarum universalis, was published
posthumously, 6 years after his death at Montbeliard on
26 October 1613.
The full three-volume text was eventually financed and
published in 1650–1651. This contained concise and
accurate descriptions and synonyms for 5226 plants,
mainly from Europe. The number of species covered, a
massive increase on the 240 plants described by Brunfels,
was only matched by his brother Gaspard’s Pinax, which
contained 6000 plants but was designed as a complete
dictionary of plant names rather than as detailed account
of each plant.
Sources
Dictionary of scientific biography 1970–80 16 vols.
Charles Scribner, New York.
Dictionnaire historique et biographique de la Suisse
1921–34 8 vols. Neuchatel.
Jorio M (ed) 2002 Dictionnaire historique de la Suisse.
Editions Gilles Attinger, Hauterive.
John Gerard
Gerard was born at or near Nantwich in Cheshire in 1545,
educated at a local grammar school, apprenticed at the age
of 16 to a barber-surgeon in London and admitted to the
Company of Barber-Surgeons on 9th December 1569.
He travelled aboard a merchant ship, presumably as its
surgeon, around the countries bordering the Baltic sea.
This was his only foreign journey and on his return he
settled in London, doubtless to work as a barber-surgeon.
He moved up the ranks within the Barber-Surgeons’
Company and was elected master in 1608.
Gerard’s interest in the cultivation of medicinal plants
led in 1577 to his becoming superintendent of the gardens
of William Cecil, Lord Burleigh, at the Strand in London
and at Theobald’s in Hertfordshire. He held this position
until 1598 and from 1586 until 1603 or 1604 he was
curator of the physic garden in Chelsea belonging to the
College of Physicians in London. He had his own garden
in Holborn and issued a catalogue in 1596 of the 1039
plants he had acquired and cultivated there so had sub-
stantial practical knowledge of medicinal plants.
His Herball or Generall Historie of Plantes was published
in 1597. The herbal, occupying 1392 pages plus
THE WESTERN HERBAL TRADITION
14
father, the Reverend Attersoll, the rector of the parish of St
Margaret’s in Isfield, where he grew up learning the names
of the plants of the surrounding Sussex fields and hedge-
rows. He attended a free-school in the area and then was
admitted to Cambridge University in 1632. It seems by this
time that he had fallen in love with the well-born daughter
of a wealthy Sussex family and in 1634 he left to elope
abroad with her until their parents could be reconciled to
the match. On the way to this secret meeting the young
woman was struck by lightning and killed.
Culpeper was devastated by this tragedy and did not
return to university. He must have shown some interest in
medicine because his grandfather then apprenticed him to
a Mr White, an apothecary, near Temple Bar, in London,
with whom Culpeper began to learn the trade. Just over a
year later, White’s business failed and Culpeper had to be
found another master. Francis Drake in Threadneedle
Street agreed to have him alongside his existing apprentice
Samuel Leadbetter. When Drake died in February 1639
Leadbetter had just become licensed, and he took
Culpeper, who was now deep in the study of medicine,
into the business with him.
These were stormy times, with the King and parliament
at loggerheads and heading towards civil war. Apothecaries
meanwhile were diagnosing and treating those who could
not afford doctors and resisting attempts by the College of
Physicians to suppress this practice. Although the College
of Physicians had few members, they attempted to enforce
their monopoly on medical treatment in London. Culpeper
himself, between 1642 and 1643, was tried and acquitted
of witchcraft and twice Leadbetter was ordered to remove
him from his shop. Culpeper was a staunch republican and
during this year fought in the battle of Newbury, where he
received a musket shot in the chest, a wound which prob-
ably hastened his early death at the age of 37 from con-
sumption. In 1640 Culpeper had married 15-year-old Alice
Field and through this union came into enough money to
leave Leadbetter’s shop in 1644 and set himself up as a
physician in poor and unfashionable Spitalfields, East
London, where he remained until the end of his life, treat-
ing the poor and the uneducated.
At the end of the war Culpeper was apparently commis-
sioned to render from Latin into English the Pharmaco-
poeia of the College of Physicians. He produced A Physicall
Directory or A Translation of the London Dispensatory in
1649, peppered with his own acerbic comments critical of
the privilege and avarice of the doctors and with enough
information to allow a literate audience to make up the
medicines for themselves, thus challenging the monopoly
of apothecaries. His strong puritan beliefs had been revo-
lutionized during the civil war – he supported the execu-
tion of King Charles in the year of his first publication and
he was attacked in print for his rebellious, godless stance
and for a book, the pages of which were only ‘fit to wipe
ones breeches withall’. The translation, however, brought
immediate fame and he devoted the remainder of his life
Pavord A 2005 The naming of names: the search for
order in the world of plants. Bloomsbury, London.
Sangwine E 1978 The private libraries of Tudor doctors.
Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences
33:167–184.
John Parkinson
John Parkinson was born 1567 and was apprenticed for 8
years to a London apothecary, Francis Slater, a member of
the Grocers’ Company. He gained his freedom of that
Company in 1593 but felt that the importance of an
apothecary’s work was not sufficiently recognized. He
strongly supported the setting up of a Society of Apothe-
caries, which was formed in December 1617, and advo-
cated the drawing up of a schedule of all medicines which
should be stocked by an apothecary. He was also one of
five apothecaries consulted by the College of Physicians
during the compilation of the first Pharmacopoeia Londin-
ensis (1618). He became apothecary to James I.
He devoted much of his time to tending his garden in
Long Acre. In 1629 he published his first work Paradisi in
Sole Paradisus Terrestris or A Garden of All Sorts of Pleasant
Flowers which our English ayre will permit to be noursed up
with a Kitchen Garden and an Orchard, the first book pub-
lished on English gardening and which included descrip-
tions of almost a thousand plants.
There had been an intention to add a fourth section on
medicinal simples to the three topics of his first book but
it took him years to write the monumental Theatrum
Botanicum of 1640, which describes over 3800 plants in
more than 1700 pages. Here Parkinson drew on the plant
authorities of his day, including the incorporation of
Gaspard Bauhin’s synonyms of plants from his Pinax and
an acknowledged use of the papers of his colleague Mat-
thias de L’Obel. Plants were divided into 17 ‘tribes’, based
partly on their medicinal qualities and partly on habitat.
Parkinson died in the summer of 1650 and was buried at
St Martin-in-the-Fields.
Sources
Dictionary of national biography. Oxford University Press,
Oxford. Online. Available: http://www.oxforddnb.com.
Sangwine E 1978 The private libraries of Tudor doctors,
Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences
33:167–184.
Nicholas Culpeper
Nicholas Culpeper was born on 18 October 1616, probably
in Ockley, Surrey, into the well-established Culpeper
family. However, his father, also Nicholas, rector of Ockley,
died 19 days before he was born and the family made a
settlement on his mother Mary to provide for his future
education. Mary took the young Nicholas to live with her
Chapter
The historical sources | 1 |
THE WESTERN HERBAL TRADITION
15
year before. Lewis’ The New Dispensatory … Intended
as a Correction and Improvement of Quincy was in its turn
improved upon, to become The Edinburgh New Dispensatory
of 1786 and later The London Dispensatory of 1811. The first
British Pharmacopoeia in 1864 was heavily based on The
Edinburgh Dispensatory. Quincy’s translation of Santorio’s
Medicina Statica, for which he was awarded an MD from
Edinburgh in 1712, was itself republished as late as 1842.
Quincy’s writings reflect his support of contemporary
iatrophysical theories based on the mechanics and
scientific experiments of his day to promote the good
health of humanity. He rejected the Galenic notion of
spirits residing in the body and was vehemently against
any form of medical quackery or empiricism. Likewise he
deprecated the royal touch for scrofula. His Compleat
English Dispensatory was divided into four parts: a theory
of pharmacy and its several processes; a description of the
officinal simples with their medicinal virtues and Galeni-
cal and chemical preparations; the officinal compositions
for apothecaries to dispense; and a number of extempora-
neous prescriptions, some of which enjoyed long-lasting
popularity, for the treatment of various diseases. Quincy
grouped the simples into nervous, stomachics, strengthen-
ers, balsamics, diuretics, diaphoretics, emetics and cathar-
tics, sternutatories, narcotics, coolers, topics and
miscellaneous.
His death is dated by his publications and is reckoned
to be in 1722.
Sources
Dictionary of national biography. Oxford University Press,
Oxford. Online. Available: http://www.oxforddnb.com.
Howard-Jones N 1951 John Quincy MD apothecary and
iatrophysical writer. Journal of the History of Medicine
and Allied Sciences, 6:149–175.
Joseph Miller
Joseph Miller was an apothecary and lecturer in botany at
the Chelsea Physick Garden, London. He was appointed
Master there in 1738 and continued to work for the
Society of Apothecaries, to which the garden belonged,
until his death in 1748. In 1722 he published Botanicum
Officinale or A Compendious Herbal. This herbal was heavily
drawn upon by Elizabeth Blackwell, author of the A
Curious Herbal of 1735 for the medicinal properties of
the plants she depicted and described, but is otherwise
uncelebrated.
Sources
Madge B 2001 Elizabeth Blackwell – the forgotten
herbalist? Health Information and Libraries Journal
18:144–152.
to other translations of the leading continental works on
medicine of the time, with the purpose of empowering his
readers to be able to treat their own ills. He added original
works of his own, such as A Directory for Midwives and
Semiotica Uranica or An Astrological Judgement of Diseases
from the Decumbiture of the Sick, both in 1651, and his
herbal The English Physitian in 1652, which remains in
print today as Culpeper’s Herbal, as well as annual
ephemeredes in the early 1650s.
In subsequent editions of A Physicall Directory, Culpeper
added a Key to Galen and Hippocrates, their Method of
Physick, while his translation of the College’s new edition
of the Pharmacopoeia, Pharmacopoeia Londinensis or A
London Dispensatory of 1653, contained An Astrologo-
physical Discourse. The book had become a self-help
manual of medicine for his readers, through which he
sought an end to the monopoly of power by doctors.
Culpeper’s writings taught the basis of Galenic medicine
but rejected the authority of old texts in favour of experi-
ment and observation as a means to proper reasoning in
physic. He seems to have been influenced by English Para-
celsianism and saw the use of astrology in diagnosing and
in identifying the appropriate medicines as the key to the
use of his herbal, where almost every medicine described
is linked to one of the seven planets and sometimes to the
signs of the zodiac.
Culpeper’s legacy is stronger as a medical educator than
as a physician. His political and religious aims endeared
him to the poorer classes, while his revolutionary stance,
attacks on privilege and monopoly, and his insistence on
the importance of occult practices guaranteed him enemies
in print long after his death.
Sources
Dictionary of national biography. Oxford University Press,
Oxford. Online. Available: http://www.oxforddnb.com.
Tobyn G 1997 Culpeper’s medicine. Element Books,
Shaftesbury, Dorset.
Woolley B 2003 The herbalist: Nicholas Culpeper and
the fight for medical freedom. Harper Collins, London.
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
John Quincy
John Quincy was an apothecary. He wrote or translated
11 works, the most famous of which were his Pharmaco-
poeia Officinalis & Extemporanea or A Compleat English Dis-
pensatory, first published in 1718, and his medical
dictionary Lexicon Physico-medicum of 1719.
Quincy’s Dispensatory went through 12 editions before
being extensively revised in 1749 by William Lewis, who
had translated in English the Edinburgh Pharmacopoeia the
THE WESTERN HERBAL TRADITION
16
John Hill
John Hill, physician and actor, came from Lincolnshire.
His father had a Cambridge medical degree and worked
as a theologian. Little is known of his early life before
London apothecary Edward Angier took him on as an
apprentice in 1730–1731. Hill maintained a lifelong inter-
est in botany, which competed throughout with an equal
passion for the theatre. Hill ran an apothecary shop near
the Strand in London and accepted commissions from
wealthy patrons around the country to collect plant speci-
mens while at the same time furthering his acting career.
In 1743 Hill returned to London and to his business
and, now settled in Westminster, he became acquainted
with significant naturalists and fellows of the Royal
Society, while promoting his interest in natural science.
This propelled him into a life of prolific writing in the
course of which he obtained an MD degree from the Uni-
versity of St Andrews. He edited journals and wrote books
on acting and on science among a variety of other topics.
His The Useful Family Herbal came out in 1754 and was
republished the next year along with his British Herbal. In
1759 he brought out his Flora Britannica, the first Linnaean
flora of Britain, and was encouraged by his patron Lord
Bute to begin work on his magnum opus, The Vegetable
System, which ran to 26 volumes by the time of his death
in 1775. This brought him international recognition,
including his presentation by Linnaeus at the Swedish
Court, from where he obtained a knighthood at the end
of his life.
Other publications appeared, including Cautions
Against the Immoderate Use of Snuff, which associated
tobacco with cancerous growths. Hill spent much money
on producing his various works, some of which he
recouped by manufacturing and exporting herbal medi-
cines such as ‘tincture of valerian’, on the virtues of which
he had already published a separate work, and ‘essence of
water dock’.
Hill continued his links with the theatrical world for a
time but he was a controversial figure and made many
enemies. He died at his home in Golden Square, London,
on 22 November 1775.
Sources
Dictionary of national biography. Oxford University Press,
Oxford. Online. Available: http://www.oxforddnb.com.
19TH CENTURY BRITISH
Albert Isiah Coffin
Coffin was born in Ohio, USA. He practised the methods
of Samuel Thomson (1769–1843), who patented a
Field H 1820 Memoirs historical and illustrative of the
botanick garden at Chelsea. R Gilbert, London.
William Cullen
William Cullen was born in Hamilton, Scotland on 15
April 1710. His father was an attorney and agent to the
Duke of Hamilton and, after university study in Glasgow,
he was apprenticed to John Paisley, a Glasgow surgeon
apothecary. Cullen went to London in 1729 and the next
year was appointed surgeon on a boat bound for the West
Indies. He returned north in 1732 and in the years 1734–
1736, thanks to a small legacy on the death of his father,
Cullen was able to attend classes at the recently founded
medical school at the University of Edinburgh, where he
became interested in chemistry. He then set up in practice
in Hamilton and received the Duke as both patient and
then patron.
In order to practice solely as a physician he acquired an
MD from Glasgow University in 1740 and moved to
Glasgow in 1744. He practiced medicine and lectured on
medicine and then from 1747 was appointed to the first
independent lectureship in chemistry in Britain. He was
appointed professor of chemistry at Edinburgh University
in 1755 and this began his illustrious career in Edinburgh,
where his private practice also thrived. His courses of lec-
tures continued until his death in early 1790. His lectures
in materia medica at Edinburgh were so well received that
an unauthorized printing of his lecture notes was made,
forcing him to publish them himself in 1773. He was
active in the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, of
which he was a fellow from 1756 and president from 1773
to 1775, including working on a revision of the Edinburgh
pharmacopoeia.
Cullen’s lectures endeavoured to develop a systematic
approach, showing how signs and symptoms at the
bedside related to physiology, and developed a rational
basis for prescribing the herbal and chemical medicines of
his day. He put the nervous system, then an exciting new
area of scientific medicine, at the centre, suggesting that
all diseases could be described to some extent as nervous
in origin. He introduced the term ‘neurosis’ into medicine,
which through his published works and their translations
established the concept across Europe and America.
Sources
Crellin JK 1971 William Cullen: his calibre as a teacher,
and an unpublished introduction to his A treatise on the
material medica, London, 1773. Medical History 15:
79–87.
Dictionary of national biography. Oxford University
Press, Oxford. Online. Available: http://www.
oxforddnb.com.
Dictionary of scientific biography 1970–80 16 vols.
Charles Scribner, New York.
Chapter
The historical sources | 1 |
THE WESTERN HERBAL TRADITION
17
Sources
Fox W 1920 The working-man’s model family botanic
guide to health, 22nd edn. W Fox and Sons, Sheffield.
William Cook
William Cook was a significant figure in the development
of education for herbal practitioners in 19th century
America. He had originally been trained as an eclectic at
the time before eclecticism and physio-medicalism
divided, and taught at the Botanico-Medical College in
Cincinatti in the 1850s. The neo-Thomsonians began to
describe themselves as physio-medicalists around 1852. In
1859 he set up the Physio-Medical College in Cincinatti,
and in 1885 he set up the Chicago Physio-Medical College,
which was renamed the College of Medicine and Surgery
in 1897. His book, published in 1869, brings together a
substantially wider range of herbs than originally used by
Thomsonians.
Sources
Berman A 1956 Neo-Thomsonianism in the United States.
Journal of the History of Medicine 11:133–154.
Haller JS 1997 Kindly medicine, physio-medicalism in
America 1836–1911. Kent State University Press.
Finley Ellingwood
Finley Ellingwood was born in Manchester, Indiana on 12
September 1852. He obtained a medical degree from
Bennett Medical College in Chicago in 1878. After practis-
ing as a physician in Illinois for 6 years, he became Profes-
sor of Chemistry in Bennett Medical College from 1884
to 1900 and later Professor of Materia Medica and Thera-
peutics from 1900 to 1907. He ran a practice in Chicago
during this time, wrote several books on eclectic medicine
and edited a number of medical journals. He was secretary
of the National Eclectic Medical Association from 1902 to
1907. He died in California in 1920.
Sources
Henrietta’s Herbal. Online. Available: http://www.
henriettesherbal.com/eclectics/books.html.
http://homepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~mhender/
BioFinleyEllingwood.html.
Richard Cranfield Wren
In 1896 Richard Wren became a partner in the company
of Potter & Clarke in East London, which had been
founded in 1812. Potter’s Cyclopaedia was designed to
provide a concise summary of the names, synonyms, parts
used, actions, indications and dosage of medicinal plants.
self-help system of herbal medicine which was very
popular in pre-civil war America. By 1834 he was a Thom-
sonian agent in Ohio. He came to Britain in 1839, firstly
to London but then lived in Hull, Leeds and then Man-
chester from 1847. Coffin was a salesman but he was
responsible for a medical self-help movement which
served to promote the health and well-being of working
people, particularly in Northern England. He was in part-
nership with Thomas Harle, a qualified doctor, in Man-
chester and also in London from 1850. He published
journals and A Treatise on Midwifery and The Diseases of
Women and Children in 1849. The Botanic Guide to Health
discusses medical theories briefly, and then gives a descrip-
tion of herbs grouped by actions and sections on the
treatment of diseases with accounts of successful cases.
Coffin was a firm believer in temperance and his book
includes practical advice on health and diet. Skelton’s
Botanic Recorder (1855) gives accounts of his public dis-
putes with other herbalists partly because he sought a
monopoly on the importation of the American herbs
used, and partly because he disagreed with other Thom-
sonian herbalists, such as John Skelton, who sought to
widen the materia medica and to improve the education
of herbalists.
The text used is the 49th edition, which is undated but
the preface states that the edition has been revised and
corrected and that over 40 000 books had been sold. It
includes testimonials for the 35th edition in 1864. Coffin
died in 1866, so the 49th edition may be a copy of the
35th edition.
Sources
Coffin AI 1845, 1864 Botanic guide to health. Haynes,
Coffin, London.
Haller JS 2000 The people’s doctors: Samuel Thomson
and the American botanical movement, 1790–1860.
Southern Illinois University Press.
Skelton J 1955 Skelton’s botanic recorder. Josiah Cople-
stone, Leeds.
William Fox
According to the 22nd edition of his book, William Fox
established his business in 1840. He is listed in the White’s
Directory for Sheffield of 1852 as herbalist and agent to Dr
Coffin. The 19th and 22nd editions were edited by his son
Alfred Russell Fox, Botanical Pharmacy, 8 Castle Street,
Sheffield. The 24th edition of The Model Family Botanic
Guide is dated 1932 and states that 250 000 copies had
been sold since the first edition. In the introduction, the
medical theories of and life of Samuel Thomson are dis-
cussed, followed by a description of herbs grouped by
actions and sections on the treatment of diseases. It ends
with a price list of herbs obtainable from the Botanical
Pharmacy.
THE WESTERN HERBAL TRADITION
18
books The Secrets of Metals, and the three volume Healing
Plants, the latter offering a remarkably sensitive exploration
of the nature of individual plants within their families and
their relationship to the human being.
Source
Berufsverband Anthroposophischer Apoteker in Deutsch-
land 2006 Pioneers in Anthroposophic Pharmacy. Online.
Available: http://wwwiaap.org.uk/download/pioneers-in-
anthroposophic-pharmacy-june-2006.pdf.
Rudolf Weiss
Professor Rudolf Fritz Weiss has been referred to as the
founding father of modern German phytotherapy. He was
born in Berlin and studied botany and medicine at the
university there, qualifying as a doctor in 1922. A teaching
post in herbal medicine was interrupted by war service as
an army doctor, followed by 7 years in Russian captivity
as a doctor in prisoner-of-war camp hospitals. He retired
from clinical practice in 1961 and devoted his life to sci-
entific development and acceptance of herbal medicine.
He was appointed a member of the German Commission
E in 1978. He was founder of the Zeitschrift für Phyto-
therapie and lectured on current advances in the subject
at the University of Tübingen.
Source
Weiss R 1988 Herbal medicine. Beaconsfield Publishing,
Beaconsfield.
The National Botanic Pharmacopoeia
The first edition of the National Botanic Pharmacopoeia was
brought out in 1905 to meet the needs of students working
towards the examination for entry to the National Associa-
tion of Medical Herbalists (NAHM). The NAMH was
founded in the UK in 1868 to promote professional prac-
tice and to set education standards. At the end of World
War II the Association became the National Institute of
Medical Herbalists (NIMH), but remains the oldest profes-
sional body of practising herbalists in the world today.
In his introduction, JAS Parkinson stated that one of the
aims of the modest work was to bring order out of chaos
in the herbal material medica, and through the light of
modern scientific methods of research to establish more
certainly and constantly the properties and safe applica-
tions of medicinal plants.
The second edition of the pharmacopoeia was produced
in 1921 with the assistance of Dr Sarah Webb, W Burns
Lingard and RC Wren, author of Potter’s Cyclopaedia. JW
Scurrah stated in the preface that all poisonous remedies
had been removed from the text, and about 40 non-
poisonous herbs added.
This edition was revised and reprinted 17 times, followed
by new editions in 1989 and 2003.
Richard Hool
Richard Lawrence Hool practised in Bolton, Lancashire. He
established a business in 1872 in the Market Hall, which
continues to be owned and managed by his descendants
today. As a keen botanist he collected herbs in the wild and
was President of the Bolton Linnean Medical Botanist
Society and an active contributor to the Lancashire branch
of the National Association of Medical Herbalists.
Maud Grieve
Sophie Emma Magdalene Law was born on 4 May 1858,
in Islington, London, to James Law, a warehouseman and
his wife Sophia Ballisat. She lived in India with her
husband William Sommerville Grieve and retired with
him to Chalfont St Peter, Buckinghamshire in 1905. At her
home there she established a garden for the growing of
medicinal and culinary herbs and became the county’s
representative for the Daughters of Ceres, a movement
concerned with increasing the opportunities for women in
horticultural jobs, and helped to found the National Herb
Growing Association. During World War I she provided
comprehensive training in the preparation of medicinal
herbs to relieve a shortage of medical supplies. To this end
she also issued a series of pamphlets on the cultivation
and use of medicinal herbs. After the war she published
several booklets and trained former servicemen, some of
whom went to British colonies to start herb farms. She was
a Fellow of the Royal Horticultural Society and President
of the British Guild of Herb Growers.
A Modern Herbal was conceived and edited by Hilda
Leyel, founder of the Society of Herbalists, based on
Grieve’s monographs and extended by the editor to
include American herbs.
Sources
Dictionary of national biography. Oxford University Press,
Oxford. Online. Available: http://www.oxforddnb.com.
Wilhelm Pelikan
Wilhelm Pelikan studied chemistry in Vienna and Graz. He
heard Rudolf Steiner lecture in Vienna in 1918 and went on
to become a private pupil of his. He was head of the Weleda
establishment for 40 years, developing a range of anthropo-
sophical medicines, and researching on the efficacy of
potentisation, among many other ventures in his full life.
He established medicinal herb gardens in the firm’s grounds
and elsewhere, and was co-editor of the Weleda Korre-
spondenzblaetter für Aerzte. He undertook Goethean study of
metals and botany of medicinal plants, producing the
Chapter
The historical sources | 1 |
THE WESTERN HERBAL TRADITION
19
EC Review of Medicines for herbal medicines with product
licences of right granted under the Medicines Act 1968,
and this spurred his interest in the constituents of medici-
nal plants. He has been a member of the
ESCOP Scientific Committee for over 20 years (including
14 years as Co-Chairman), and a member of the Board
of the British Herbal Medicine Association for over
25 years.
Andrew Chevallier
Andrew Chevallier is a practising herbalist and fellow and
past president of the National Institute of Medical Herbal-
ists. He was instrumental in establishing the first univer-
sity BSc programme for herbal medicine in the UK and is
the author of several books.
Elizabeth Williamson
Professor Elizabeth Williamson is a registered pharmacist
and Director of Pharmacy Practice at the University of
Reading. She is a member of the British Pharmacopoeia
Commission and Chair of the Expert Advisory Group for
Herbal and Complementary Medicines, which advises the
Commission on standards for herbal medicine.
David Hoffman
David Hoffman has been a medical herbalist since 1979.
He trained with the National Institute of Medical Herbal-
ists. He was inaugural president of the American Herbalist
Guild and has taught phytotherapy widely. He is a teacher,
author and consultant in North America.
Christopher Menzies-Trull
Christopher Menzies-Trull is a physiomedical herbal prac-
titioner, having trained with the National Institute of
Medical Herbalists. He completed the course in 1979, the
same year as he qualified as a state registered nurse.
Simon Mills and Kerry Bone
Simon Mills is teaching fellow at the Peninsula College of
Medicine and Dentistry. He is a herbal practitioner of
many years standing, author and co-author of a number
of authoritative texts on herbal medicine. His roles have
included President of the National Institute of Medical
Herbalists, founder of the College of Practitioners of Phy-
totherapy, special advisor to the House of Lords Science
and Technology Committee’s inquiry onto complemen-
tary and alternative medicine, and Joint Director of the
Centre for Complementary Health Studies at Exeter
University. He is Secretary of the European Scientific
Cooperative on Phytotherapy, and Member of the Advi-
sory Board of the American Botanical Council.
Albert and Lilian Priest
Herbal Medication is described as a handbook for clinical
students and newly qualified herbal practitioners, and
written with the presumption of their adequate knowledge
of pre-clinical sciences and of a sound basis of naturo-
pathic and physiomedical philosophy by Albert and Lilian
Priest, who drew on over 35 years of experience in the
practice of natural therapeutics. Albert Priest had been
Vice-Dean of the British College of Naturopathy and Oste-
opathy and Director of Education of the National Institute
of Medical Herbalists and edited the journal The Herbal
Practitioner from 1945 to 1965. In the foreword the authors
expressed thanks to Albert Orbell FNIMH for inculcating
in them during clinical training the same therapeutic
principles.
British Herbal Pharmacopoeia
The British Herbal Pharmacopoeia was published as a con-
solidated edition in 1983 that brought together sections
1, 2 and 3 published in 1971–1974, which were then
published as part 1 in 1976 and part 2 in 1979. In the
preface of the 1983 edition, the chairman pays tribute to
the vision and dedication of the former chairman F
Fletcher Hyde and to the support given over many years
by the secretary H Hall. In the preface to the 1974 edition,
Fletcher Hyde states that the work required for the mono-
graphs was started in 1965 by the eight members and three
advisory members of the Scientific Committee of the
British Herbal Medicine Association. He states that the
therapeutics section was his responsibility with the support
of two advisory members and input from herbal practi-
tioners. Fletcher Hyde entered practice in Leicester in 1934
and was Director of Research of the National Institute of
Medical Herbalists for over 30 years, and President for 8
years from 1967 to 1975. His papers are held at the Com-
plementary and Alternative Medicine Library and Infor-
mation Service (CAMLIS Online. Available: http://
www.cam.nhs.uk/about/archive/).
Thomas Bartram
Thomas Bartram was a consulting medical herbalist, well
known throughout the herbal world, particularly for his
Encyclopaedia of Herbal Medicine. He was a fellow of the
National Institute of Medical Herbalists and the Royal
Society of Health and Health Food Institute. He founded
Gerard House, for international innovators in herbal med-
icine, in 1958. He was editor of the magazine Grace.
Peter Bradley
Peter Bradley was trained in chemistry and is a Fellow
of the Royal Society of Chemistry. He prepared documen-
tation on quality, safety and efficacy required during the
THE WESTERN HERBAL TRADITION
20
Table 1.1 Sources used throughout the book (and therefore not referenced in the text)
Author or title Century Text used
Bauhin 17th Bauhin J 1650 Historia Plantarum Universalis. Ebroduni.
Bartram 20th Bartram T 1995 Encyclopaedia of Herbal Medicine. Grace Publishers, Bournemouth.
Bradley 21st Bradley P (ed.) 2006 British Herbal Compendium vol. 2. British Herbal Medicines
Association, Bournemouth.
British Herbal
Pharmacopoeia
20th BHPA Scientific Committee 1983 British Herbal Pharmacopeia. British Herbal
Medicine Association, Keighley, West Yorkshire.
Chevallier 21st Chevallier A 2001 The Encyclopedia of Medicinal Plants. Dorling Kindersley, London.
Coffin 19th Coffin AI 1864 Botanic Guide to Health, 49th edn. Haynes, Coffin, London.
Cook 19th Cook W 1869 (1985 reprint) The Physiomedical Dispensatory. Eclectic Medical
Publications, Oregon.
Cullen 18th Cullen W 1773 Lectures on Materia Medica. T. Lowndes, London. Online. Available:
http://library.wellcome.ac.uk/ECCO.
Culpeper 17th Culpeper N 1656 The English Physitian. London. Culpeper N 1995 Culpeper’s
Complete Herbal. Wordsworth Library, Ware, Herts.
D’Alechamps 16th D’Alechamps J 1586 Historia Generalis Plantarum. Lugdini.
Dioscorides 1st Beck LY 2005 Pedanius Dioscorides of Anazarbus: De Materia Medica. Olms–
Weidmann, Hildesheim.
Dodoens 16th Dodoens R 1619 A New Herbal: or Historie of Plants. London.
Ellingwood 19th, 20th Ellingwood F 1919 (1988 reprint) American Materia Medica, Therapeutics and
Pharmacognosy. Eclectic Medical Publications, Oregon.
Fox 19th Fox W 1920 The Working-Man’s Model Family Botanic Guide to Health, 22nd edn.
W Fox and Sons, Sheffield.
Fuchs 16th Fuchs L 1545 De Historia Stirpium. Basileae.
Galen 2nd Galen C 1543 De Simplicium Medicamentorum Facultatibus Libri Undecim. Paris.
Gerard 17th Gerard J 1975 The Herbal or General History of Plants. Dover Publications, New
York.
Grieve 20th Grieve M 1931 (1984 edn) A Modern Herbal. Penguin Books, Harmandsworth.
Hildegard 12th Throop P (trans.) 1998 Hildegard von Bingen’s Physica. Healing Arts Press, Rochester,
VT.
Hill 18th Hill J 1755 The Useful Family Herbal. London.
Hoffman 21st Hoffman D 2003 Medical Herbalism: The Science and Practice of Herbal Medicine.
Healing Arts Press, Rochester, VT.
Ibn Sina (Avicenna) 11th Abu Ali ibn Sino 2003 Kanon Vrachebnoj Nauki.10 vols. Enio, Odessa.
Hool 20th Hool RL 1918 Health from British wild herbs. W H Webb, Southport.
Macer 11th Macer 1511 Carmen de Virtutibus Herbarum. Paris.
Mattioli 16th Matthioli P A 1554 Petri Andreae Matthioli Medici Senensis Commentarii, in Libros
Sex Pedacii Dioscoridis Anazarbei, De Materia Medica 1554. Venice.
Menzies-Trull 21st Menzies-Trull C 2003 Herbal Medicine Keys to Physiomedicalism. Faculty of
Physiomedical Herbal Medicine, Newcastle, Staffordshire.
Chapter
The historical sources | 1 |
THE WESTERN HERBAL TRADITION
21
Author or title Century Text used
Mills and Bone 21st Mills S, Bone K 2005 The Essential Guide to Herbal Safety. Elsevier, St Louis,
Missouri.
Miller 18th Miller J 1722 Botanicum Officinale or A Compendious Herbal. E Bell, J Senex,
W Taylor, J Osborn, London.
Myddfai physicians 14th,
18th
Pughe J 1861 (1993 reprint) The Physicians of Myddvai; Meddygon Myddfai.
Llanerch Publishers, Felinfach.
National Botanic
Pharmacopoeia
20th National Association of Medical Herbalists of Great Britain 1921 The National Botanic
Pharmacopoeia, 2nd edn. Woodhouse, Cornthwaite, Bradford.
Old English
Herbarium
10th,
11th
Van Arsdall A 2002 Medieval Herbal Remedies: The Old English Herbarium and
Anglo-Saxon Medicine. Routledge, London.
Parkinson 17th Parkinson J 1640 Theatrum Botanicum: or The Theater of Plants. London
Pelikan 20th Pelikan W 1997 Healing Plants: Insights Through Spiritual Science, vol. 1. Mercury
Press, Spring Valley, New York.
Pelikan W 1962 Heilpflanzenkunde, vol.2. Verlag am Goetheanum, Dornach.
Pelikan W 1978 Heilpflanzenkunde, vol. 3. Verlag am Goetheanum, Dornach.
Pliny 1st Jones W H S (trans.) 1949–1962 Pliny Natural History, with an English translation in
10 volumes. William Heinemann, London.
Priest and Priest 20th Priest A, Priest L 1982 Herbal Medication. LN Fowler, London.
Pseudo-Apuleius 5th Hunger F W T (ed.) 1935 The herbal of Pseudo-Apuleius from the ninth century
manuscript in the abbey of Monte Cassino. EJ Brill, Leyden.
Quincy 18th Quincy J 1724 Pharmacopoeia Officinalis & Extemporanea. London.
Salernitan herbal 12th Roberts E, Stearn W (trans.) 1984 Livre des Simples Medecines: Codex Bruxellensis
IV.1024 A 15th Century French Herbal. De Schutter, Antwerp.
Serapio the Younger 13th Serapio 1479 Liber Serapionis Aggregatus in Medicinis Simplicibus. Venice.
Turner 16th Chapman GTL, Tweedle MN (eds) 1995 A New Herball by William Turner, part I,
vol 1. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Chapman GTL, McCombie F, Wesencraft A (eds) 1995 A New Herball by William
Turner, parts II & III, vol 2. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Weiss 20th Weiss R 1988 Herbal Medicine. Beaconsfield Publishing, Beaconsfield.
Williamson 21st Williamson E 2003 Potter’s Herbal Cyclopaedia. CW Daniel, London.
Wood 21st Wood M 2008 The Earthwise Herbal: a Complete Guide to Old World Medicinal
Plants. North Atlantic Books, Berkeley CA.
Wren 20th Wren RC 1907 Potter’s Cyclopaedia of Botanical Drugs and Preparations. Potter &
Clarke, London.
Table 1.1 continued
THE WESTERN HERBAL TRADITION
22
Kerry Bone is a medical herbalist practising in Queens-
land, Australia. He is an experienced research and indus-
trial chemist. He is co-founder and head of research and
development of MediHerb. He is a Fellow of the National
Herbalist Association of Australia and of the National
Institute of Medical Herbalists in the UK. He is founder
and Principal of the Australian College of Phytotherapy.
He has written extensively on herbal medicine and lectures
internationally.
Matthew Wood
Matthew Wood lives near Minneapolis in the USA. He has
practised as a herbalist since 1982 in traditional western
herbalism. He is the author of several books on herbal
medicine.
