Herbals, Their Origin and Evolution: A Chapter in the History of Botany 1470-1670

by Agnes Robertson Arber

A book of this kind, in the preparation of which many previous works have been laid under contribution, is doubtless open to a certain criticism which William Turner, “the Father of British Botany,” anticipated in the case of his own writings. I think I cannot do better than proffer my excuse in the very words of this sixteenth-century herbalist:

“For some of them will saye, seynge that I graunte that I have gathered this booke of so manye writers, that I offer unto you an heape of other mennis laboures, and nothinge of myne owne,... To whom I aunswere, that if the honye that the bees gather out of so manye floure of herbes, shrubbes, and trees, that are growing in other mennis medowes, feldes and closes: maye justelye be called the bees honye:... So maye I call it that I have learned and gathered of manye good autoures ... my booke.”

AGNES ARBER.

Balfour Laboratory, Cambridge,

26th July, 1912.

---

CONTENTS

CHAP.		PAGE
I.	The Early History of Botany
	1. Introductory	[1]
	2. Aristotelian Botany	[2]
	3. Medicinal Botany	[6]
II.	The Earliest Printed Herbals (Fifteenth Century)
	1. The Encyclopædia of Bartholomæus Anglicus and ‘TheBook of Nature’	[10]
	2. The ‘Herbarium’ of Apuleius Platonicus	[11]
	3. The Latin ‘Herbarius’	[16]
	4. The German ‘Herbarius’ and related Works	[18]
	5. The ‘Hortus Sanitatis’	[25]
III.	The Early History of the Herbal in England
	1. The ‘Herbarium’ of Apuleius Platonicus	[35]
	2. Banckes’ Herbal	[38]
	3. ‘The Grete Herball’	[40]
IV.	The Botanical Renaissance of the Sixteenth andSeventeenth Centuries
	1. The Herbal in Germany	[47]
	2. The Herbal in the Low Countries	[70]
	3. The Herbal in Italy	[79]
	4. The Herbal in Switzerland	[90]
	5. The Herbal in France	[98]
	6. The Herbal in England	[100]
	7. The Revival of Aristotelian Botany	[116]
V.	The Evolution of the Art of Plant Description	[119]
VI.	The Evolution of Plant Classification	[134]
VII.	The Evolution of the Art of Botanical Illustration	[154]
VIII.	The Doctrine of Signatures, and Astrological Botany	[204]
IX.	Conclusions	[221]
	Appendix I
	A Chronological List of the Principal Herbals and RelatedBotanical Works published between 1470 and 1670	[227]
	Appendix II
	A List, in Alphabetical Order, of the Principal Critical andHistorical Works dealing with the Subjects discussed inthis Book	[241]
	Index	[247]

---