[4] Sprengel, Geschichte der Botanik, i. 27.
[5] Ib. i. 28.
Those who attended to the effects of plants, might discover in them some medicinal properties, and might easily imagine more; and when the love of the marvellous was added to the hope of health, it is easy to believe that men would be very credulous. We need not dwell upon the examples of this. In Pliny’s Introduction to that book of his [360] Natural History which treats of the medicinal virtues of plants, he says,[6] “Antiquity was so much struck with the properties of herbs, that it affirmed things incredible. Xanthus, the historian, says, that a man killed by a dragon, will be restored to life by an herb which he calls balin; and that Thylo, when killed by a dragon, was recovered by the same plant. Democritus asserted, and Theophrastus believed, that there was an herb, at the touch of which, the wedge which the woodman had driven into a tree would leap out again. Though we cannot credit these stories, most persons believe that almost anything might be effected by means of herbs, if their virtues were fully known.” How far from a reasonable estimate of the reality of such virtues were the persons who entertained this belief we may judge from the many superstitious observances which they associated with the gathering and using of medicinal plants. Theophrastus speaks of these;[7] “The drug-sellers and the rhizotomists (root-cutters) tell us,” he says, “some things which may be true, but other things which are merely solemn quackery;[8] thus they direct us to gather some plants, standing from the wind, and with our bodies anointed; some by night, some by day, some before the sun falls on them. So far there may be something in their rules. But others are too fantastical and far fetched. It is, perhaps, not absurd to use a prayer in plucking a plant; but they go further than this. We are to draw a sword three times round the mandragora, and to cut it looking to the west: again, to dance round it, and to use obscene language, as they say those who sow cumin should utter blasphemies. Again, we are to draw a line round the black hellebore, standing to the east and praying; and to avoid an eagle either on the right or on the left; for, say they, ‘if an eagle be near, the cutter will die in a year.’”
[6] Lib. xxv. 5.
[7] De Plantis, ix. 9.
[8] Ἐπιτραγῳδοῦντες.
This extract may serve to show the extent to which these imaginations were prevalent, and the manner in which they were looked upon by Theophrastus, our first great botanical author. And we may now consider that we have given sufficient attention to these fables and superstitions, which have no place in the history of the progress of real knowledge, except to show the strange chaos of wild fancies and legends out of which it had to emerge. We proceed to trace the history of the knowledge of plants. [361]
CHAPTER II.
Unsystematic Knowledge of Plants.
A STEP was made towards the formation of the Science of Plants, although undoubtedly a slight one, as soon as men began to collect information concerning them and their properties, from a love and reverence for knowledge, independent of the passion for the marvellous and the impulse of practical utility. This step was very early made. The “wisdom” of Solomon, and the admiration which was bestowed upon it, prove, even at that period, such a working of the speculative faculty: and we are told, that among other evidences of his being “wiser than all men,” “he spake of trees, from the cedar-tree that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall.”[9] The father of history, Herodotus, shows us that a taste for natural history had, in his time, found a place in the minds of the Greeks. In speaking of the luxuriant vegetation of the Babylonian plain,[10] he is so far from desiring to astonish merely, that he says, “the blades of wheat and barley are full four fingers wide; but as to the size of the trees which grow from millet and sesame, though I could mention it, I will not; knowing well that those who have not been in that country will hardly believe what I have said already.” He then proceeds to describe some remarkable circumstances respecting the fertilization of the date-palms in Assyria.
[9] 1 Kings iv. 33.