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

by Agnes Robertson Arber

It is sometimes held that the real originator of the theory of signatures, in any approximation to a scientific form, was Giambattista Porta, who was probably born at Naples shortly before the death of Paracelsus. He wrote a book about human physiognomy, in which he endeavoured to find, in the bodily form of man, indications as to his character and spiritual qualities. This study suggested to him the idea that the inner qualities, and the healing powers of the herbs might also be revealed by external signs, and thus led to his famous work, the ‘Phytognomonica,’ which was first published at Naples in 1588.

Porta developed his theory in detail, and pushed it to great lengths. He supposed, for example, that long-lived plants would lengthen a man’s life, while short-lived plants would abbreviate it. He held that herbs with a yellow sap would cure jaundice, while those whose surface was rough to the touch would heal those diseases that destroy the natural smoothness of the skin. The resemblance of certain plants to certain animals opened to Porta a vast field of dogmatism on a basis of conjecture. Plants with flowers shaped like butterflies would, he supposed, cure the bites of insects, while those whose roots or fruits had a jointed appearance, and thus remotely suggested a scorpion, must necessarily be sovereign remedies for the sting of that creature. Porta also detected many obscure points of resemblance between the flowers and fruits of certain plants, and the limbs and organs of certain animals. In such cases of resemblance he held that an investigation of the temperament of the animal in question would determine what kind of disease the plant was intended to cure. It will be recognised from these examples that the doctrine of signatures was remarkably elastic, and was not fettered by any rigid consistency.

Text-fig. 109. Herbs of the Scorpion [Porta, Phytognomonica, 1591].

The illustrations of the ‘Phytognomonica’ are of great interest as interpreting Porta’s point of view. The part of man’s body which is healed by a particular herb, or the animal whose bites or stings can be cured by it, are represented in the same wood-cut as the herb. For example, the back view of a human head with a thick crop of hair is introduced into the block with the Maidenhair Fern, which is an ancient specific for baldness; a Pomegranate with its seeds exposed, and a plant of “Toothwort,” with its hard, white scale-leaves, are represented in the same figure as a set of human teeth; a drawing of a scorpion accompanies some pictures of plants with articulated seed-vessels (Text-fig. [109]) and an adder’s head is introduced below the drawing of the plant known as the “Adder’s tongue.”

It would serve little purpose to deal in detail with the various exponents of the doctrine of signatures, such, for example, as Johann Popp, who in 1625 published a herbal written from this standpoint, and containing also some astrological botany. We will only now refer to one of the later champions of the signatures of plants, an English herbalist of the seventeenth century, who made the subject peculiarly his own. This was William Cole[37], a Fellow of New College, Oxford, who lived and botanised at Putney in Surrey. He seems to have been a person of much character, and his vigorous arguments would often be very telling, were it possible to admit the soundness of his premisses.

William Cole carried the doctrine of signatures to as extreme a point as can well be imagined. His account of the Walnut, from his work ‘Adam in Eden,’ 1657, may be quoted as an illustration: “Wall-nuts have the perfect Signature of the Head: The outer husk or green Covering, represent the Pericranium, or outward skin of the skull, whereon the hair groweth, and therefore salt made of those husks or barks, are exceeding good for wounds in the head. The inner wooddy shell hath the Signature of the Skull, and the little yellow skin, or Peel, that covereth the Kernell of the hard Meninga and Pia-mater, which are the thin scarfes that envelope the brain. The Kernel hath the very figure of the Brain, and therefore it is very profitable for the Brain, and resists poysons; For if the Kernel be bruised, and moystned with the quintessence of Wine, and laid upon the Crown of the Head, it comforts the brain and head mightily.”

In Cole’s writings we meet with instances of a curious confusion of thought, which characterised the doctrine of signatures. The signature in some cases represents an animal injurious to man, and is taken to denote that the plant in question will cure its bites or stings. For instance, “That Plant that is called Adders tongue, because the stalke of it represents one, is a soveraigne wound Herbe to cure the biting of an Adder.” In other cases, the signature represents one of the organs of the human body, and indicates that the plant will cure diseases of that organ. For example, “Heart Trefoyle is so called, not onely because the Leafe is Triangular like the Heart of a Man, but also because each Leafe containes the perfect Icon of an Heart, and that in its proper colour, viz. a flesh colour. It defendeth the Heart against the noisome vapour of the Spleen.”

Cole seems to have possessed a philosophic mind, and to have endeavoured to follow his theories to their logical conclusion. He was much exercised because a large proportion of the plants with undoubted medicinal virtues have no obvious signatures. He concluded that a certain number were endowed with signatures, in order to set man on the right track in his search for herbal remedies; the remainder were purposely left blank, in order to encourage his skill and resource in discovering their properties for himself. A further ingenious argument is that a number of plants are left without signatures, because if all were signed, “the rarity of it, which is the delight, would be taken away by too much harping upon one string.”