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

by Agnes Robertson Arber

JOHN PARKINSON (1567-1650).
[Theatrum botanicum, 1640.]

Elaborate directions for the planting and treatment of a garden precede an account of a large number of plants cultivated at that time, with some mention of their uses. The book is illustrated with full-page wood engravings of no great merit, in each of which a number of different plants are represented (Text-fig. [55] is taken from part of one illustration). The figures are partly original and partly copied from the books of de l’Écluse, de l’Obel and others.

In 1640, Parkinson followed up this work with a much larger volume, dealing with plants in general, and called the ‘Theatrum botanicum: The Theater of Plants. Or, an Herball of a Large Extent.’ He complains that the publication of the work has been delayed, partly through the “disastrous times,” but chiefly through the machinations of “wretched and perverse men.” According to the preface to the ‘Paradisus Terrestris,’ the author’s original idea was merely to supplement his description of the Flower Garden by an account of “A Garden of Simples.” This scheme grew into one of a more extensive and general nature, but without losing the predominant medical interest, which would have characterised the work as originally planned. In accordance with this intention, the virtues of the herbs are dealt with in great detail.

Parkinson’s herbal is in some ways an improvement on that of Johnson and Gerard. Almost the whole of Bauhin’s ‘Pinax’ is incorporated, with the result that the account of the nomenclature of each plant becomes very full and detailed. Many of de l’Obel’s manuscript notes are also inserted. The scheme of classification adopted is, however, markedly inferior to that of de l’Obel.

Occasionally, in spite of his comparatively late date, Parkinson displays an imagination that is truly mediæval. He is eloquent on the subject of that rare and precious commodity, the horn of the Unicorn, which is a cure for many bodily ills. He describes the animal as living “farre remote from these parts, and in huge vast Wildernesses among other most fierce and wilde beasts.” He discusses, also, the use of the powder of mummies as a medicine, and his description is enlivened with a picture of an embalmed corpse.

The illustrations to the Theatrum Botanicum are of no importance, being chiefly copied from those of Gerard.

The great British botanists who follow next upon Parkinson, in point of time, are Robert Morison (b. 1620) and John Ray (b. 1627), but as their chief works appeared after the close of the period selected for special study in this book (1470-1670), and as they were botanists in the modern sense, rather than herbalists, we will not attempt any discussion of their writings.

While Morison and Ray were advancing the subject of Systematic Botany, Nehemiah Grew and the Italian, Marcello Malpighi, born respectively in 1641 and 1628, were laying the foundations of the science of Plant Anatomy. Their work, also, is outside the scope of the present book, and it is only mentioned at this point in order to show that the latter part of the seventeenth century witnessed a considerable revolution in the science. From this period onwards, with the opening up of new lines of inquiry, the importance of the herbal steadily declined, and though books which come under this heading were produced even in the nineteenth century, the day of their pre-eminence was over.

7. The Revival of Aristotelian Botany.

The subject of Aristotelian botany scarcely comes within the scope of a book on Herbals, but, at the same time, it cannot be sharply separated from the botany of the herbalists. It therefore seems desirable to make a brief reference at this point to its chief sixteenth-century exponent, the Italian savant, Andrea Cesalpino (1519-1603), and to one or two other writers whose point of view was similar. We have already shown that, in the Middle Ages, Albertus Magnus carried on the tradition of Aristotle and Theophrastus. At the time of the Renaissance, there was again a revival of this aspect of the study, as well as of the branch with which we are here more immediately concerned, that, namely, which deals with plants from the standpoint of medicine and natural history. Cesalpino (Plate [XIV]), it is true, was largely concerned, like the herbalists, with the mere description of plants, but the fame of his great work, ‘De plantis libri XVI’ (1583), rests upon the first book, which contains an account of the theory of botany on Aristotelian lines.