Our author was evidently a keen and enthusiastic collector of herbs. In his book ‘The Art of Simpling’ (1656) he complains bitterly that physicians leave the gathering of herbs to the apothecaries, and the latter “rely commonly upon the words of the silly Hearb-women, who many times bring them Quid for Quo, then which nothing can be more sad.”
Another strong supporter in this country of the doctrine of signatures was the astrological botanist, Robert Turner. He definitely states that “God hath imprinted upon the Plants, Herbs, and Flowers, as it were in Hieroglyphicks, the very signature of their Vertues.”
It is interesting to find that the doctrine of signatures was repudiated by the best of the sixteenth-century herbalists. Dodoens, for instance, wrote in 1583 that “the doctrine of the Signatures of Plants has received the authority of no ancient writer who is held in any esteem: moreover it is so changeable and uncertain that, as far as science or learning is concerned, it seems absolutely unworthy of acceptance[38].”
A later writer, Guy de la Brosse, criticised the theory very acutely, pointing out that it was quite easy to imagine any resemblance between a plant and an animal that happened to be convenient. “C’est comme des nuées,” he writes, “que l’on fait ressembler à tout ce que la fantaisie se represente, à une Gruë, à une Grenoüille, à un homme, à une armee, et autres semblables visions[39].”
Both Paracelsus and Porta deprecate the use of foreign drugs, on the ground that in the country where a disease arises, there nature produces means to overcome it. This idea is one which constantly recurs in the herbals. In 1664 Robert Turner wrote, “For what Climate soever is subject to any particular Disease, in the same Place there grows a Cure.” There is ample evidence of the survival of this theory even in the nineteenth century; for instance, in the preface to Thomas Green’s ‘Universal Herbal’ of 1816 we find the remark, “Nature has, in this country, as well as in all others, provided, in the herbs of its own growth, the remedies for the several diseases to which it is most subject.” The notion persists indeed to the present day; there is a wide-spread belief among children, for example, that Docks always grow in the neighbourhood of Stinging Nettles, in order to provide a cure in situ! Whether this view contains any grain of truth or not, it certainly deserves our gratitude, since it led to Dr Maclagan’s discovery of Salicin as a cure for rheumatic fever. On the ground that in the case of malarial diseases “the poisons which cause them and the remedy which cures them are naturally produced under similar climatic conditions,” Maclagan sought and found, in the bark of the Willow, which inhabits low-lying, damp situations, this drug, which has proved so valuable in the treatment of rheumatism[40].
The doctrine of signatures is not the only piece of botanical mysticism associated with the name of Paracelsus. He was also a firm believer in the influence of the heavenly bodies upon the vegetable world, or, in other words, in botanical astrology. He considered that each plant was under the influence of some particular star, and that it was this influence which drew the plant out of the earth when the seed germinated. He held each plant to be a terrestrial star, and each star, a spiritualised plant. Giambattista Porta also believed in a relation between certain plants and corresponding stars or planets. A figure in his ‘Phytognomonica’ here reproduced (Text-fig. [110]) shows a number of “lunar plants.”
Text-fig. 110. Lunar Herbs [Porta, Phytognomonica, 1591].