CHAPTER IIl (Part 15)

and elaborate than the book to which we have just referred. It seems however impossible to discover the principle, if any, which guided the author in connecting any given herb with one sign of the Zodiac rather than another. Much stress is laid in this herbal on the hour at which the herbs ought to be gathered, great importance being ascribed to the state of the moon at the time. We are reminded of a passage in ‘The Merchant of Venice’ where Jessica says of a bright moonlight evening— “In such a night Medea gather’d the enchanted herbs That did renew old son.” This aspect of the subject is emphasised in a curious little book published in 1571, Nicolaus Winckler’s ‘Chronica herbarum,’ which is an astrological calendar giving informa- tion as to the appropriate times for gathering different roots and herbs. Almost contemporaneously with Bi wistitcs s ‘ Kreutter- buch,’ the first part of a work on astrological botany was 216 Signatures and Astrology [cH. published by Leonhardt Thurneisser zum Thurn. This writer, who was possessed of undoubted talent, was also an adventurer and charlatan of the first order. He was born at Basle in 1530. He learned his father’s craft, that of a goldsmith, and is said to have also helped a local doctor to collect and prepare herbs, and to have been employed to read aloud to him from the works of Paracelsus. His career in Basle came to an untimely end, for he seems to have tried to retaliate on some customers who treated him badly, by selling them gilded lead as a substitute for gold, and consequently had to flee the country when the fraud was discovered. He travelled widely, making an especial study of mining. He had an adventurous and varied life, sometimes in poverty and obscurity, sometimes in wealth and renown. During Thurneisser’s most influential period he lived in Berlin, practising medicine, making amulets, talismans, and secret remedies which yielded large profits. He also published astrological calendars, cast nativities, and supple- mented his income by the practice of usury. At this time he owned a printing press, and employed a large staff which included artists and engravers. Later on, he was pursued by a succession of misfortunes, including accusations of magic and witchcraft, which compelled him to leave Germany. Little is known of the latter part of his life; he died in the last decade of the sixteenth century. Leonhardt Thurneisser projected a great botanical work inten books. The first was published in Berlin in 1578, but the others never appeared. The title was ‘Historia unnd Beschreibung Influentischer, Elementischer und Natiir- licher Wirckungen, Aller fremden unnd heimischen Erdge- wechssen.’ A Latin version of this book, under the name, ‘Historia sive descriptio plantarum,’ was published in the same year. This first instalment deals only with the Um- bellifers, which were regarded as under the dominion of the Sun and Mars. The nomenclature and the figures are not clear enough to allow individual species to be recognised. Each is drawn in an ellipse surrounded by an ornamental border, which contains mystical inscriptions denoting the properties of the plant (e.g. Plate XX). In some cases diagrams are given, showing the conjunction of the Plate XX ‘Cervaria feemina’ [Thurneisser, Historia sive descriptio plantarum, 1587]. vir] Astrological Botany 217 stars under which the herb should be gathered (Text-fig. 111). After the manner of the ancients, Thurneisser describes plants, according to their qualities, as either male or female. He also adds a third class, typified by a child, to symbolise those whose qualities are feeble. It may perhaps be worth CONSTELLATIO PECK LIARS. ® PLANTA bee anna 1528 collefa eff, aD,Friderice Strem- pere Medico &G Phyfice excellent: €§ prater Gires commemorates etiam slys multss pollere deprebenfa eff. Tempore antcm fofitona shine, Calm pofitss Plancrarum of Sigueruns (Ot Eisura appofita eftendit) talers fere factem obtinwit, Figura Cals Anno 1528. @srione gis Sle Text-fig. 111. Astrological Diagram relating to the gathering of “Cervaria foemina” [Thurneisser, Historia sive Descriptio Plantarum, 1587]. while to translate here a few sentences of the first chapter _ of the ‘Historia’,’ to show how far such writers as Leonhardt Thurneisser had departed from the pursuit of the subject upon legitimate lines. When discussing the planting of 1 The edition of 1587 was used in making this translation. 218 Signatures and Astrology [cH. roots and herbs and the gathering of seeds, he declares that ‘it is absolutely essential that these operations should be performed so as to correspond with the stations and positions of the planets and heavenly bodies, to whose control diseases are properly subject. And against disease we have to employ herbs, with due regard of course to the sex, whichever it be, of human beings; and so herbs intended to benefit the male sex should be procured when the Sun or Moon is in some male sign [of the Zodiac], e.g. Sagittarius or Aquarius, or if this is impossible, at least when they are in Leo. Similarly herbs intended to benefit women should be gathered under some female sign, Virgo, of course, or, if that is impossible, in Taurus or Cancer.” In the seventeenth century, England became strongly infected with astrological botany. The most notorious exponent of the subject was Nicholas Culpeper (1616— 1654), who, about 1640, set up as an astrologer and physician in Spitalfields. His portrait is reproduced in Plate X XI. He created great indignation among the medical profession by publishing, under the name of ‘A Physicall Directory,’ an unauthorised English translation of the Pharmacopceia, which had been issued by the College of Physicians. That Culpeper was unpopular with orthodox medical practitioners is hardly surprising, when we consider the way in which he speaks of them in this book, as ‘“‘a company of proud, insulting, domineering Doctors, whose wits were born above five hundred years before themselves.” He goes on to ask —‘ Is it handsom and wel-beseeming a Common-wealth to see a Doctor ride in State, in Plush with a footcloath, and not a grain of Wit but what was in print before he was born ?” Many editions of the ‘ Physicall Directory’ were issued under different names. As ‘The English Physician en- larged,’ it enjoyed great popularity, and was reprinted as late as the nineteenth century. The edition of 1653 is described on the title-page as “Being an Astrologo- Physical Discourse of the Vulgar Herbs of this Nation: Containing a Compleat Method of Physick, whereby a man may pre- serve his Body in Health; or Cure himself, being Sick, for three pence Charge, with such things only as grow in England, they being most fit for English Bodies.” Plate XXI heer oe ind hold his’ mind to fooke : eas ‘un the Booke . 4 ¢ shaddow of that B Which ferves but as a case te _ His Inte lictuall part be Un fbvely lines deferibe nck, Le, NICHOLAS CULPEPER (1616—1654). A Physicall Directory, 1649. Engraving by Cross. yi Y S y =@™p . i. es fa en % Z ee Le Sie oe Here 7 VI] Nicholas C. ulpeper 219 Culpeper describes certain herbs as being under the dominion of the sun, the moon, or a planet, and others as under a planet and also one of the constellations of the Zodiac. His reasons for connecting a particular herb with a particular heavenly body are curiously inconsequent. He states, for example, that ‘“Wormwood is an Herb of Mars,...1 prove it thus; What delights in Martial places, is a Martial Herb; but Wormwood delights in Martial places (for about Forges and Iron Works you may gather a Cart load of it) Z7go it is a Martial Herb.” The author explains that each disease is caused by a planet. One way of curing the ailment is by the use of herbs belonging to an opposing planet—e.g. diseases pro- duced by Jupiter are healed by the herbs of Mercury. On the other hand, the illness may be cured ‘by sympathy,” that is by the use of herbs belonging to the planet which is responsible for the disease. Culpeper indulges in a strange maze of similar reasons to justify the use of Wormwood for affections of the eyes. “The Eyes are under the Luminaries; the right Eye of a Man, and the left Eye of a Woman the Sz claims Dominion over: The left Eye of a Man, and the right Eye of a Woman, are the priviledg of the Joon, Wormwood an Herb of Mars cures both'; what belongs to the Sux by Sympathy, because he is exalted in his House; but what belongs to the Joon by Antipathy, becaus he hath his Pal ai hers.” It is somewhat surprising to find that, in his preface, Culpeper claims that he surpasses all his predecessors in being alone guided by reason, whereas all previous writers are “as full of nonsense and contradictions as an Egg is ful of meat.” Culpeper met with considerable opposition and criticism from his contemporaries. Shortly after his death, William Cole in his ‘Art of Simpling’ wrote scornfully of astrological botanists, “Amongst which Master Cudpeper (a man now dead, and therefore I shall speak of him as modestly as I can, _ for were he alive I should be more plain with him) was a great Stickler; And he, forsooth, judgeth all men unfit to 1 Printed “hoth” in the edition of 1653 from which these quotations are taken. 220 Signatures and Astrology [CH. VIII be Physitians, who are not Artists in Astrology, as if he and some other Figure-flingers his companions, had been the onely Physitians in Axgland, whereas for ought I can gather, either by his Books, or learne from the report of others, he was a man very ignorant in the forme of Simples.” It is interesting to notice that Cole, though he seems to the modern reader very credulous on the subject of the signatures of plants, was completely sceptical as to the association of astrology and botany. The main argument by which he tries to discredit it is an ingenious one. The knowledge of herbs is, he says, ‘‘a subject as antient as the Creation (as the Scriptures witnesse) yea more antient then the Sunne, or Moon, or Starres, they being created on the fourth day, whereas Plants were the third. Thus did God even at first confute the folly of those Astrologers, who goe about to maintaine that all vegitables in their growth, are enslaved to a necessary and unavoidable dependance on the influences of the Starres; Whereas Plants were, even when Planets were not.” CAPA ER LX CONCLUSIONS some interest. Perhaps the most obvious of these is the incalculable Q debt which Botany owes to Medicine. * An overwhelming majority of the ~ herbalists were physicians, who were led to the study of botany on account of its connection with the arts of healing. As we have already pointed out, medicine gave the original impulse, not only to Systematic Botany, but also to the study of the Anatomy of Plants. However, as the evolution of the herbal proceeded, we have shown that botany rose from being a mere hand-maid of medicine to a position of comparative independence. This is well exemplified in the history of plant classification. When the early medical botanists attempted any arrange- ment of their material, it was on a purely utilitarian basis ; the herbs were merely classified according to the qualities which made them of value to man. But as the science grew, the need of a more systematic classification began to make itself felt, and in some of the works published in the latter half of the period we are considering, there is a distinct, if only partially successful, attempt to group the plants according to the affinities which they present when considered in themselves, and not in relation to man. The ideal of a natural system in the Vegetable Kingdom, in 222 Conclusions [CH. which each plant should find its inevitable place, must have been clear for instance to de |’Obel, when he wrote in the ‘Adversaria,’ of ‘an order, than which nothing more beautiful exists in the heavens, or in the mind of a wise man’.” Second only to the debt of botany to medicine is its debt to certain branches of the fine arts, more especially wood- engraving. The draughtsman and engraver not only dis- seminated the knowledge of plants, but their work must often have revealed to the botanist features which had escaped his less highly educated and subtle eye. As we have already pointed out, the art of plant description lagged conspicuously behind that of plant illus- tration. The vague and crude, but often picturesque, accounts, given by the early herbalists of the plants which they observed, contrast curiously with the technically accurate, but colourless and impersonal descriptions from the pens of modern botanists. The rapid rise of botany, in the two centuries which we have reviewed, must have been greatly stimulated by the cosmopolitanism of the savants of the renaissance. Periods of study at a succession of different universities, and wide European travel, including visits to scientific men of various countries, seem to have formed part of the recognised equipment of the botanical student. Possibly the zeal for travel was not altogether spontaneous, but was artificially stimulated by the religious disturbances so common at the period of the Reformation and later, which often drove into exile the adherents of the Reformed Faith, among whom many botanists were numbered. This is exemplified in the cases of William Turner, Charles de |’Ecluse, and the Bauhins. It is interesting to notice that, in the works of the best herbalists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, such for instance as Bock, Turner, Dodoens and Gaspard Bauhin, we find, comparatively speaking, little belief in any kind of superstition connected with plants, such as the doctrine of signatures, or astrology. A number of books dealing with such topics appeared during the period we have considered, * “Sic enim ordine, quo nihil pulchrius in ccelo, aut in Sapientis animo,...” 1x] Evolution of the Herbal 223 but their writers form a class apart, and must not be con- fused with the herbalists proper, whose attitude was, on the whole, marked by a healthy scepticism which was in advance of their time. It would, naturally, be far from true to say that they were all quite free from superstition, but, con- sidering the intellectual atmosphere of the period, their enlightenment was quite remarkable. When we come to consider the origin of the herbal, we find that it is impossible to assign any date for its beginning. Text-fig. 112. Wood-cut from the title-page of the Grete Herball, 1526. Reduced. In manuscript form, herbals have existed from very early times, but, in the present book, those prior to the inven- tion of printing have been scarcely touched upon. Our subject has been limited to the most active life-period of the printed herbal, which may be reckoned as beginning in the last quarter of the fifteenth century, with the‘ Book of Nature,’ the ‘Herbarium’ of Apuleius, and the Latin and German ‘Herbarius.’ When this active period ended is less easily decided, but in some senses it may fairly be taken as 224 Conclusions [cH. covering only the comparatively short space of two hundred - years. There are, of course, a very large number of later herbals, belonging to the end of the seventeenth, the eighteenth, and even the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but their importance in the history of botany appears to the present writer to be relatively small, and hence, in this volume, attention has been almost entirely confined to works which appeared before 1670. After this period, botany rapidly became more scientific; the discovery of the function of the stamens, which was first announced in 1682, marking a very definite step in advance. As time went on, the 4erda/, with its character- istic mixture of medical and botanical lore, gave way before the exclusively medical pharmacopera on the one hand, and the exclusively botanical fora on the other. As the use of home-made remedies declined, and the chemist’s shop took the place of the housewife’s herb-garden and still-room, the practical value of the herbal diminished almost to vanishing point. The best epoch in the history of the herbal, from the point of view of book-illustration, is confined within much narrower limits than the two centuries we have been con- sidering. The suggestion has been made, and seems thoroughly justified, that the finest period should be reckoned as falling between 1530 and 1614, that is, between the wood-cuts of Hans Weiditz in Brunfels’ ‘Herbarum vivze eicones,’ and the copper-plates of Crispian de Passe in the ‘Hortus Floridus.’ This good period thus lasted less than one hundred years, and belongs chiefly to the sixteenth century. From the artistic point of view, its zenith is perhaps reached in the wood-engravings which illustrate Fuchs’ great work, ‘ De historia stirpium’ (1542), though, from a more strictly scientific standpoint, the drawings by Camerarius and Gesner, which appeared in 1586 and 1588, may be said to bear the palm. As far as the text is concerned, the culmination of the botanical works of the period under consideration may be regarded as foreshadowed in the ‘Stirpium Adversaria Nova’ of Pena and de l’Obel (1570—71) and attained in the ‘Prodromos’ (1620) and the ‘Pinax’ (1623) of Gaspard Bauhin. In the works of the latter author, Ix] Conclustons 225 Printed by jue obese: ae PUM { Zp —— Ts \Y : 2 — ines SS = & , See Wi an Xk rue TT ——— ee oS 3 \s ae Heinrich Stayner, Augsburg, 1534]. LT = Text-fig. 113. A Herbalist’s Garden and Store-room [Das Kreiiterbich oder Herbarius. aa: Pa ON: 4’ eek ke ha x Ox AS CONT Peel, I usa t =) 226 Conclusions [CH. Ix classification, nomenclature and description reach their high- water mark, though it is to de lObel, and to his precursor, Bock, one