Herbs are familiar to all of us. We grow them in gardens, see a dizzying array of them on supermarket shelves and use them to add all manner of flavours to recipes. But in the past, when most people lived in the countryside, the plants and herbs that grew all around them were nature’s medicine cabinet. Herbology, the study of folk remedies and the use of plants, herbs and fungi as medical treatments, was practised and documented in scholarly books in many places on the planet. In this journey through herbology we’ll see how this knowledge was compiled into a series of books called herbals, how these helped develop the science of modern medicine, and also how the myths around the magical properties of certain plants, such as mandrakes, persisted for many, many years.
Herbology is an important subject in the Harry Potter books, and becomes more central as the stories develop: from the Wolfsbane potion that alleviates the symptoms of Lupin’s werewolf problem in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban to the Gillyweed Harry uses to breathe underwater in Goblet of Fire. In order to make Polyjuice Potion (which, you’ll remember, enables you to take on the appearance of another person), you need to pay attention in Herbology class, after all.