Figure 1.1 A framework for the history of herbal medicine. Illustration by Anne Stobart.
The history of Western herbal medicine has been little researched in any systematic and authoritative way, even though herbal medicine has been a significant element of both lay and learned health care of the past.1 Sadly, although there is a considerable range of published material on herbal history, much of the literature is based on repeated or embellished sources and, for serious researchers, there seems to be a dearth of reliable studies from which to draw. The history of herbal medicine lacks a coherent identity and, consequently, much relevant scholarly research has been hidden from view. Yet there are scholars in various academic disciplines covering both the distant and recent past who are researching topics which have considerable relevance to the history of herbal medicine. When a number of seminars were organized in London in 2010 and 2011 in order to bring researchers in the history of herbal medicine together, there was an enthusiastic response from the contributors of papers and from all who attended. This book arises out of further work and refinement carried out by the original contributors to seminars and other researchers.
The initial inspiration for this book came from a desire to make the research topics from the London seminars on the history of herbal medicine more widely known, and from the realization of the need to support researchers and encourage further scholarly historical investigation into herbal medicine. With this book, our aim is to reach historical researchers, herbal practitioners, health professionals, lecturers, students and other interested readers wanting more detail and depth in relation to the history of herbal medicine. Alongside raising awareness of existing and potential sources, methodologies and key issues or debates, we wish to support and stimulate those interested in pursuing further research studies.
The editors are both historians of herbal medicine and herbal medicine practitioners with varied motivations for researching the history of herbal medicine: to satisfy curiosity about the past; to extend historical knowledge; to inform clinical practice today; to teach students of herbal medicine; and to support the research endeavour of both clinical and non-clinical researchers. Both editors view history as a systematic endeavour to interpret the past, albeit carried out by investigators with varied standpoints. Our experiences in gaining skills needed for historical study have been instructive in enabling us to perceive gaps in training for research in the history of herbal medicine. While training for practitioners of Western herbal medicine in the UK has recently developed at degree level, alongside Chinese, Ayurvedic and other traditional systems, and is based on a coherent core curriculum,2 historical elements of training for the herbal practitioner are often limited, and may reflect an uncertain tradition. Current professional training in the UK for clinical Western herbal medicine practitioners provides a significant appreciation of scientific method, both in botanical and medical sciences, and herbal practitioners are able to draw on knowledge of medicinal plants based on modern research.3 This research knowledge has to be carefully evaluated alongside knowledge of traditional materia medica and past practice. However, experience in using historical methods is not extensive amongst herbal practitioners. Thus, as editors, we are aware of a need for more support and training for those herbal practitioners and others interested in research, particularly if the aim is to realize a more significant body of rigorous historical research.
Due to our respective specialist historical interests, both of us have also encountered historians and other scholars, from art, classics and literature to economic, medical and social history, who wish to be better informed about historical aspects of herbal medicine and to have access to more reliable sources. Such encounters with colleagues have alerted us to a need for further investigation into matters including: the plants historically used as medicines; the contributions to herbal medicine of key people in historical context; and the nature of past beliefs and practice involving herbal medicine. Further needs are evident in specific requests, for example, for technical advice on issues such as plant identification and the correction of potential errors in the context of transcriptions of manuscripts relevant to the history of herbal medicine.4 Thus, gaps exist in the knowledge and understanding of the history of herbal medicine amongst a range of scholars, from archivists to historians to museum curators and others. Clearly, there is a demand for more accessible and reliable research in the history of herbal medicine to be made available.
In this book, a variety of researchers have come together to share their knowledge and experience in research areas ranging from the past identification and use of medicinal plants, to the people involved in herbal medicine, and their therapeutic beliefs and practices. Our contributors come from many academic research contexts: some are herbal medicine and health care practitioners, others are specialists in archaeology, classical studies, English literature, ethnobotany, historical archives and other specific aspects of history. All have expressed support for encouraging further scholarly research through making their studies available and being explicit in terms of their approach, methodology and sources, as well as providing suggestions for reading in their respective fields of interest.
The chapters in this book are intended to inform readers about selected aspects of the history of herbal medicine. Recognizing that herbal history can incorporate a vast area in terms of chronology and geographical location, there are some limitations in scope. The primary focus is on Western herbal medicine, drawing on classical sources through to medieval and early modern texts and manuscript archives. There has not been space for consideration of other aspects of herbal history, such as herbal medicine in the context of the development of modern medicine after 1800 CE, nor to cover significant non-Western medical traditions with substantial herbal components, such as traditional Chinese and Ayurvedic medicine. These are all areas that deserve further exploration. Nevertheless, we hope that the variety of approaches and methodologies found here will provide models for research in a wide range of topics in the history of herbal medicine.
This introductory chapter sets the scene for current and future research into the history of herbal medicine and gathers a brief overview of its historiography. In particular, we make four claims about research in the history of herbal medicine:
The next section of this chapter presents a framework and working definition for this field of study with an overview of key research disciplines relevant to the history of herbal medicine. Historiographical aspects of the history of herbal medicine are then considered, including relationships to other historical studies. There are a number of challenges in developing more critical studies and these are explored and, finally, a way forward is outlined.
A framework for herbal history
Plants have been used for centuries in many contexts and, as a result, the potential scope of research into herbal history is huge. Historical studies reflecting this breadth include botanical and garden history, economic history, food history, maritime history, social and cultural history and much more. Further research areas of particular relevance to herbal history include ethnopharmacology and ethnobotany.
This book focuses on research into the history of herbal medicine. However, it is likely that there are at least three different understandings of the nature of herbal medicine: the phrase ‘herbal medicine’ may be used to describe a drug or prepared remedy based on plants, but it also may have a broader scope in referring to the activity of individuals obtaining and using plant remedies in a domestic context, or indeed to clinical practice with a therapeutic approach incorporating plant medicines alongside other treatments.5 In order to structure our consideration of the range of areas linking to research into the history of herbal medicine, it is helpful to use these varied understandings to formulate three categories: plants, people and practice (see Figure 1.1). Whilst it is unlikely that any study will focus on one of these categories exclusively, there is a considerable range of research with which to populate this framework. Considering each part of the framework in turn, we provide an indication of contributions to the research literature.
We can also draw on the framework of categories of plants, people and practice to consider sources for studying the history of herbal medicine. For the study of plants, herbals provide a key source, and other sources include those relating to plant discovery and identification such as herbariums and writings about foreign travel; papers relating to estates and gardens including plans, seed catalogues and printed horticultural advice; and trade records including merchant records, customs and import books. For the study of people in the history of herbal medicine, sources include diaries, letters and other personal papers in cultural and social history such as domestic recipe collections, household accounts, probate records, household inventories alongside other suggestive evidence of daily life in plays, poems and prose. For the study of practice in the history of herbal medicine, sources include prescriptions, individual case histories, printed medical advice books and pharmacopoeias, medical treatises, apothecary bills and notebooks and institutional, professional and legal records. Whilst these three categories and their related sources may overlap to some extent, they provide an indication of the wide range of possibilities. Although we have outlined mainly textual sources, there are others which deserve consideration and these range from art works to artefacts. Further discussion of sources, and related studies, can be found in the introductions to the book sections and in the individual chapters.
The following outline list of relevant areas of research is organized into the categories of plants, people and practice. In each category some examples are provided to give an indication of the nature of research and literature available.
Plants in the history of herbal medicine
Botanical history
Botanical history investigates a range of aspects of plants and has many historical links to medicine.6 Plants and their identification, alongside qualities and medicinal indications, are described in herbals from classical to early modern times, and a comprehensive overview by Agnes Arber of early English herbals was first published in 1912.7 Much of the history of plants as herbs is organized in lists, including original lists of herbs and their virtues in early modern herbals; past catalogue lists of garden herbs; modern lists bringing together common names for plants; or other modern lists of herbal remedies such as those recalled in oral history projects.8 There are relatively few texts which comprehensively and systematically evaluate details of plants used as herbal medicines across historical periods. One of the most substantial listings available, A Modern Herbal, provides a body of evidence, organized by common plant name, amassed in the early twentieth century and citing past authorities from classical to early modern times.9 The editor, Hilda Leyel, wrote of how ‘botany and medicine came down the ages hand in hand’ and then parted company in the seventeenth century.10 More recently, Tobyn et al. have considered the textual history of a selection of medicinal plants through examination of changes in significant texts from Dioscorides through to the present day.11
The study of the history of drugs inevitably has a considerable focus on plants as sources, and these constitute the most significant proportion of entries in pharmacopoeia, or listings of medicinal preparations.12 Although regarded as part of medical history, pharmaceutical history tends to be found in separate contexts specific to the pharmaceutical profession. Linked to the Royal Pharmaceutical Society in the UK, the Pharmaceutical Historian provides an ongoing forum for in-depth articles on specific medications, and there is an active equivalent body in the USA based on the American Institute of the History of Pharmacy.13 Other writers provide detail of the context of pharmacy in different periods: for example, Alan Touwaide provides a detailed account of changing understandings of the nature of medications or pharmaka in the classical period.14 However, Touwaide’s discussion of meanings is atypical compared to other overviews of the past use of plants as drugs which make general reference to toxic medications or remedies of ‘unproven worth’.15
Garden history
Plants in the garden context have been explored by a number of writers, ranging from the arrangements of monastery gardens to the gardens of the landed gentry.16 Andrew Wear notes how a lack of knowledge of medicinal plants and reliance on apothecaries and ‘silly Hearb-women [sic]’ could result in the medical practitioner being ‘out-witted’.17 Thus, the problem of plant recognition and lack of certainty about herb supplies encouraged the printing of botanical books and establishment of botanic gardens.18 These gardens were intended to provide plant knowledge for the practitioner rather than the lay person, one of the most familiar being the Chelsea Physic Garden, maintained to this day in London.19
Economic history
Detailed studies on some individual plants have been published, particularly considering exotic remedies, such as rhubarb (Rheum palmatum) and the quinine-containing Cinchona species (spp.). These, and other studies, have highlighted political and economic aspects of international trade.20 Authors have identified a need for further studies, including research into trade routes and how the ‘emergence of mass drug consumption’ in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries came about.21
Ethnopharmacology
Ethnopharmacology is an expanding area of research with a potentially significant relationship to herbal history.22 Pharmaceutical discovery has been a major driving force for the exploration of natural resources for new cures. In this search, oral and other historical sources are examined for likely active remedies for particular complaints, for example studies of herbals have been carried out for malaria treatments or rheumatic disorders.23 Traditional use of plants as an indicator for drug discovery has not been without criticism as there has also been recognition that a search for a phytochemical ‘golden bullet’ of plant origin may be flawed, since expectations may be unrealistic or traditional systems may have provided treatments deriving synergy, or ‘multiple and mutually potentiating therapeutic effects’ from combinations of plants.24
The exploration of historical herbal texts has been likened to ‘mining’ in the discovery of new drugs.25 Much of the research reveals the interplay of medical practices between cultures, for example between South American and European countries.26 Many ethnopharmacological studies are based on traditional societies, although Paula de Vos is significant in searching European historical texts for materia medica to compare with current-day usage.27
People and the history of herbal medicine
Culinary history
In the classical Western world, dietetics played a major role in the maintenance of health, and subsequent regimens giving advice on diet and lifestyle have provided a ready source for exploring both beliefs and practice in relation to health.28 Thus, the study of the history of food and herbal medicines have overlapped to some extent.29 The introduction of exotic items in diet has often been associated with health-promoting properties, and there are some studies of patterns of consumption of spices and other items.30
Social history
The historical study of the use of herbal medicine has benefited indirectly from developments in the social history of medicine, since increasing attention to the patient experience in historical terms has helped to draw out perceptions of therapeutic treatment and efforts at self-help, often noting the relationship between lay and learned health care.31 Some significant contributions to historical writing related to health care use gender as a key category of analysis,32 and a focus on medicinal recipes as a genre of women’s writing reveals the importance of social networks in the compilation of recipe collections and health care.33 Yet, an uncritical acceptance of assertions about household medicine and herbs needs to be challenged, as available evidence reveals that although hundreds of recipes were collected by households, only a limited number were made.34
Ethnobotany
Ethnobotanical studies of people and plants focus attention on matters of intellectual knowledge, rights and matters of biodiversity, some of which feature historical and medicinal aspects. This has been a recent and exciting area of development largely informed by anthropology and social sciences.35 Conservation projects have also provided a motivation for gathering of data on the past medical uses of plants in many cultures, particularly aiming at safeguarding both knowledge and plants.36
Practice and the history of herbal medicine
Medical history
Studies of medical history up to the twentieth century tended to recount the evolution of the medical professions of physicians, surgeons and apothecaries. However, more recent studies question whether boundaries can be so readily identified, and show that the ‘marketplace’ of health care in the past was both more extensive and more pluralistic.37 Other writers draw attention to historical changes in the concepts of health and disease.38 Amongst medical personnel in history, the role of apothecaries as suppliers of herbs is discussed by Burnby.39 Many histories of medicine refer in passing to the role of herbs in medical practice. In relation to practitioners, Barbara Griggs has compiled a readable account of herbal medicine across the ages.40 Scholars such as Andrew Wear draw attention to the widespread use of herbal remedies in lay as well as professional contexts, discussing in detail how changes developed from the sixteenth century.41
Folklore studies
Folklore and magic were extensively considered by Keith Thomas as significant elements of a bygone age and, although sometimes persistent, they gave way to a modern rational perspective on medicine.42 Considerable effort in the later nineteenth and twentieth centuries went into the recording of people’s earlier beliefs about plants in folklore studies, and numerous local collections of herbal folklore from oral and other sources can be located.43 Folklore records vary considerably in their provenance, and the difficulty of adducing beliefs from limited records requires critical appraisal of the sources, although it has been argued that this appraisal is essential to counter assumptions about the reliance of past health care on herbals largely deriving from Mediterranean areas.44
History of science and ideas
Many aspects of the history of science are related to the development of herbal medicine; indeed the history of medicine is usually considered as part of the history of science. The ways in which past individuals and societies understood nature influenced their beliefs about appropriate therapeutic practices. Ideas about natural history deriving from the classical period and their subsequent development in medieval and early modern times are captured by a number of studies.45 Also of interest in recent studies are the ways in which ideas and knowledge were communicated in the past. For example, increased studies of household records including recipe collections reveal much about the form and transmission of medical knowledge, including knowledge relating to medicinal plants.46 These studies have intersected with others on the secrets of nature.47
As can be seen above, there are many ‘fragments’ of the history of herbal medicine which are located in a multitude of research areas and disciplines. To some extent, this may reflect the varied nature of herbal medicine itself. Fortunately, many researchers in these different contexts have indicated interest in reaching beyond their disciplines to link with others. A broad definition providing a framework may be helpful, drawing on the three categories of plants, people and practice used above. In the various sub-disciplines of history and other areas identified above, a common factor is the examination and appraisal of sources incorporating these categories to a greater or lesser extent, using a variety of scholarly methodologies. Thus, we suggest that research in the history of herbal medicine can be broadly defined as ‘systematic enquiry to understand and explain the supply, knowledge and use of plants incorporating people’s beliefs, knowledge and involvement in past therapeutic practices in the context of health and illness’. This definition is intended to support a unifying framework for elements of scholarly research that contribute to the history of herbal medicine. Following a brief overview of methods, we consider historiography, or the writing of the history of herbal medicine, and we show how this is related to the varying perspectives on history and herbal medicine of different authors.
Methods in researching the history of herbal medicine
Historical research in aspects of herbal medicine can draw on a wide range of methods: generally these depend on the nature of primary sources selected for study. Many studies are based on textual analysis, drawing on both printed or manuscript archives, and range from herbals, casebooks and medical advice books to letters and family papers. The researcher can select from biographical (extending from significant figures in medicine to patients, lay healers and practitioners) and narrative approaches (covering a variety of contexts and time periods from war to domestic scenes) through to comparative studies (especially comparisons between cultures and therapeutic approaches). The range of possible methods also encompasses the qualitative study of ideas (particularly beliefs and conflicts about health and illness, analysis of original texts such as herbals for understanding of the elemental basis of plant medicines) and more quantitative styles of analysis (such as quantities of imported herbs, frequency of mention of selected plants and complaints in herbals, accounts portraying trends and fashions in health care, analysis of inventories). Some recent approaches have adopted a style of micro-history in which a more rounded and detailed picture of past practice is sought in a particular family, parish or other location, drawing on a range of sources such as letters, accounts and household papers. Textual studies have implications in terms of the specific techniques needed to examine and interpret sources, including language and transcription skills. Linguistic studies, and detailed etymological searches, have also been developed, for example looking at medieval herbals. Further specialist techniques are necessary for sources which are non-textual, ranging from illustrations to material objects and buildings, and for the purposes of identification and interpretation. Overall, the range of methods appropriate to research in the history of herbal medicine is at least as wide as the range of methods in history as a whole.
We have seen how research into the history of herbal medicine is fragmentary, occurring in a number of different study areas. How has this affected the way that the history of herbal medicine has been written? Since, historically, medicine has involved much reliance on plants, we might expect that there would be considerable interest in writing about herbal aspects of the past. However, although the use of medicinal herbs is frequently mentioned in passing as part of a lengthy tradition, little detail is provided and evidence of actual use is rarely considered, only efficacy or the likelihood of successful treatment. For example, Raskin et al. (2002), in their review of trends in plant research, make the general point that ‘for centuries people have used plants for healing’ with ‘varying success’.48
Historiography and herbal medicine
Past writers have varied considerably in their approach to writing about herbal medicines. In medieval and early modern times, writers had a need to emphasize the status and lineage of their medical knowledge. Thus, for example, in Gerard’s herbal, the ‘courteous and well willing Readers’ were told that ‘both Kings and Princes have esteemed them [herbs] as Jewels’ and this was followed by a review of a glorious history of key figures from Dioscorides onwards.49 Gerard’s preface indicates the ‘professional snobbery’ found amongst medical writers in claiming these high-status antecedents, as described by Barbara Griggs.50 In the context of the development of modern medicine in the nineteenth century, later historical descriptions of herbal medicine shifted towards antiquarian and folklore studies.51 By the twentieth century, herbal medicine came to be widely regarded by both historical and medical researchers as part of alternative medicine, quackery or folk medicine.52
The modern historiography of herbal medicine is marked by ambiguities and contradictions. Roberta Bivins notes the ‘diversity’53 of non-orthodox healing practices and the ambiguous position of herbal medicine:
Herbal remedies have an ambiguous place in medical historiography. They were, of course, a mainstay of the Western pharmacopoeia and mainstream therapeutics well into the nineteenth century, and remain a crucial part of non-biomedical therapeutics globally. However, herbalism has also been conventionally regarded as the acme of European and American folk or traditional medicine, and certainly in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries modified and systematized forms of herbalism have been at the core of explicitly alternative medical systems…54
Bivins discusses the differing agendas of researchers, some aiming to ‘debunk’ and others being interested in the valuable perspective gained by studies of popular perceptions of health and the emergence of medical orthodoxy.55 Studies published in the twenty-first century which relate to the history of herbal medicine thus reflect varying standpoints of the writers. Some remain explicitly of antiquarian interest for a medical audience. A typical example is a study by a clinical neurologist who comments on the bizarre nature of remedies used in the past in the classical materia medica indicated by Dioscorides for epilepsy (designated as the ‘falling sickness’).56 Such studies provide an opportunity to celebrate modern medicine and to reaffirm its boundaries.
Other studies in medical history refer to ‘herbalists’ alongside a variety of other non-orthodox or lay practitioners. Thus, Conrad et al. in The Western Medical Tradition: 800 BC to AD 1800 refer to ‘wise-women, astrologers, herbalists, uroscopists, empirics, apothecaries, barber-surgeons, physicians, or specialists like tooth-drawers and lithotomists’.57 Whilst this observation likely reflects contemporary accounts, it should not be taken to indicate that herbal medicine was solely associated with the empiric or lay practitioner of past health care.
Potentially contradictory observations about herbal medicine in history can be found elsewhere in the literature. For example, plants as medicines have long been associated with lower costs, even as freely available in the hedgerow. Andrew Wear notes that claims of cheaper services than physicians were characteristic of ‘empirics, mountebanks, herbalists, astrologers and uroscopists’.58 However, illustrated early herbals were extremely costly and the survival of numerous copies of printed herbals suggests that there was great care for these items, which acted as repositories of knowledge and authority in health care.59 These apparent contradictions need further exploration to understand the complexities in the perceptions and values of people of the past.
Such further studies may have direct relevance to present-day perceptions of herbal medicine. Although a range of examples of research in the history of herbal medicine are given here, there remain many gaps which allow ambiguity and contradiction to persist in modern perceptions of herbal medicine. We suggest that research related to the history of herbal medicine has resonated with the changing position of herbal medicine in society, and consider that this has further increased the fragmentation of studies, marginalizing some aspects and neglecting others. Yet, promotion of research into the history of herbal medicine could be of value in understanding conflicting viewpoints. For example, many people today believe ‘natural’ products to be safe and effective, judging by the way that this perception is widely exploited in advertising for health and cosmetic products. Meanwhile, there is vocal opposition to herbal medicine and other complementary therapies, based on claims of a lack of sufficient evidence.60 Further investigation of the history of herbal medicine could help to explain the development of these contrasting views. The quality of historiography of herbal medicine would benefit from greater awareness of the standpoint of writers and researchers.
Science, the history of medicine and herbal history
The content of writing on the history of medicine has changed considerably in recent decades. Mark Jackson effectively outlines the turn away, in medical history, from accounts of triumphant discovery towards interest in ‘the relationship of medicine to society’, although noting something of an ‘identity crisis’ in present-day research.61 Roger Cooter further notes an increased focus on cultural history and a lack of theoretical underpinning of studies in the history of medicine, and argues that there is a need for more critical awareness of values, perspectives and aims.62 Other writers have discussed a trend in the history of medicine which has effectively excluded the medicinal aspects.63
Some similarities can be noted between studies of the history of medicine and herbal history. In both we can see a varied set of ‘producers’ of history, from clinical practitioners to social scientists. John Burnham has ably described the ‘complex, nuanced and even ragged accounts’ which are inevitable in medical history because of different perspectives amongst the producers.64 Likewise there are variations in the interested audience. Yet there are significant differences between the history of medicine and herbal history, especially when considering the historical development of herbal knowledge and professional standing. The particularly interesting area of epistemology and herbal medicine deserves further exploration regarding issues in the control of herbal knowledge. Ludmilla Jordanova argues that the history of medicine cannot be treated purely as the history of science, and claims that a science focus is problematic as it marginalizes many healing practices and behaviours. Rather, she suggests, medicine might be considered more akin to technology in that matters of health and illness are generally far more commonplace and immediate, involving people in a very direct sense.65 Such an approach fits well with our framework of plants, people and practice, allowing for the inclusion of both scientific knowledge and practical experience.
The practice of herbal medicine in the past was inseparable from knowledge about the actions of plants, then embodied in the herbals which provided indications for use. Although generally known for a ‘chemical’ style of distillation, Paracelsus was as much in favour of plants as other natural remedies.66 Today there is a rapid accumulation of knowledge about the constituents of plants and efforts to sift this knowledge for the ‘active’ chemicals which may be useful in pharmaceutical terms.67 The accumulation of this knowledge is not primarily intended to validate past uses, but the dominance of bio-medicine and science infuses our view of herbal history – and it becomes hard to put aside such knowledge. Thus, a kind of comparative history underlies many investigations in which herbal treatments of the past are examined. Indeed, as herbal practitioners and historical researchers, a question we encounter in relation to the history of herbal medicine is concerned with efficacy, and we are often asked ‘Did it work?’. As practitioners and researchers, we need to be able to consider such questions in a rigorous way, without undue influence arising from today’s knowledge.
Interdisciplinary approaches
Philip Curtin describes the explosion of knowledge in science and history and claims that it is no longer possible to investigate everything at once as scholars are deprived of ‘the breadth of span they need in order to ask the most pertinent new questions’, or are separated by institutional definitions and boundaries from rephrasing those questions.68 However, approaches to research in the history of herbal medicine which draw on different disciplines to solve problems can bring enhanced understandings of the past. For example, drug discovery strategies have drawn attention to Anglo-Saxon sources.69 There is a problem of identification of particular plants in this context: for example, the same common name can be used for more than one plant – as in the case of brynwort or brownwort – and interdisciplinary collaboration of chemists and herbal practitioners (not to mention botanists, linguists, pharmacists) is needed in effectively deciphering the nature of the plants involved.70
In an interdisciplinary approach, both historically-trained and science-based scholars may come together. Herein lies another problem, in that it is not readily accepted by historians (particularly in cultural and social history) that today’s knowledge and understanding should impose on the past. Writers who attempt to bridge the gap can suffer criticism for assumptions about past practices.71 This creates a potential obstacle for the study of the history of herbal medicine, if modern understandings provide a perspective on the past that can make researchers unable to be objective. However, such knowledge can also enhance understanding of the past if used with sensitivity in an interdisciplinary context.
In this introduction we have outlined many fragmented elements of research in the history of herbal medicine and considered various historiographical aspects. Continuing interest in the history of herbal medicine presents further challenges beyond those of bringing together researchers and making studies more accessible. As discussed above, one challenge is to find approaches which can integrate present understandings of herbal medicine with traditional findings and usage. Another challenge is to develop explicit standards for research, and our view is that there needs to be recognition of the varied skills and knowledge required to effectively research the history of herbal medicine. Yet another challenge is to encourage interdisciplinary approaches which may be critical to the success of future research. This book represents a significant step in responding to these challenges, by bringing together research studies and providing details of a range of sources and examples of methodologies, and we hope it will encourage and illuminate further investigations in the history of herbal medicine.
Structure of this book
This book is arranged in four main sections, each consisting of between two and four chapters. Each section has a short introduction which identifies some key aspects of the context for research into the history of herbal medicine, and introduces the subsequent chapters. The chapters in Part 1 revisit some of the texts which are well known in the history of herbal medicine and provide some fresh perspectives on those texts. Chapters in Part 2 introduce further historical sources which may be examined for their contribution to the history of herbal medicine. Part 3 contains chapters which focus on selected individuals and their contributions to the history of herbal medicine. The chapters in Part 4 outline several disciplines beyond history, specifically archaeology and ethnobotany, providing studies of relevance to the history of herbal medicine. Suggestions for further reading can be found at the end of each chapter. Our conclusion briefly considers the history of herbal medicine as a developing research field.
Some technical notes
Dating. Where dates are given these are in the BCE/CE (Before Common Era/Common Era) format rather than BC/AD (Before Christ/Anno Domini). Otherwise, dates have not been altered and readers should note that prior to 1752, the start of each year was in March. Details of known dates of birth and death of individuals are provided where appropriate and where details differ, or may be subject to ongoing debate, those of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography or from Oxford Reference Online are given.72
Terminology. Terminology has to be carefully considered when considering past medicinal and botanical knowledge and, wherever possible, we have used terms consistently. The use of general terms like ‘traditional’ medicine has been avoided unless they are more explicitly placed in context. For other terms, see the Select Glossary at the end of the book. The format of plant names has varied through the ages and we have indicated this as follows: (i) modern Latin binomial plant names begin with a capital letter and are in italics; (ii) modern common plant names are not capitalized (unless proper names are included) or italicized; (iii) historical binomial plant names are capitalized but not italicized; (iv) historical common plant names are capitalized if generally appearing as such in original texts.
Translations. Individual contributors have specified the sources that they have used for translated material, including available editions or translations to date. Individual original language terms are indicated in italics, for example kosmos.
Transcriptions. Inserted letters, words or comments from the author for clarification are indicated by the use of brackets [thus]. Original spellings have generally been preserved, using present-day format; for example, ‘vv’ is shown as ‘w’. However, to clarify meaning, some contractions have been expanded and punctuation adjusted.
1Suzanne Taylor and Virginia Berridge, ‘Medicinal Plants and Malaria: An Historical Case Study of Research at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in the Twentieth Century’, Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene 100, no. 8 (2006): 708.
2An umbrella body, the European Herbal and Traditional Medicine Practitioners Association (EHTPA), represents professional associations of herbal/traditional medicine practitioners offering Western herbal medicine, Chinese herbal medicine, Ayurveda and traditional Tibetan medicine.
3Professional herbal practitioners in the UK train to accredited degree level with a core syllabus in botanical and medical sciences, and have to achieve a level of clinical experience in order to join the larger professional organizations such as the National Institute of Medical Herbalists. See http://www.nimh.org.uk/ (accessed 26 June 2013).
4Anecdotal examples in the editors’ experience illustrate a range of needs arising from academic scholars, archivists and others. These include an archivist at a stately home and garden seeking help in transcription of medicinal recipes, a historian requesting reliable sources for details about classically used herbs, and a museum curator wishing to correct a mistaken identification of valerian (Valeriana officinalis) as the source of the drug Valium.
5A modern herbal practitioner perspective would view ‘herbal medicine’ as ‘the use of plants, and their extracts, in a systematic and planned way to promote, sustain and restore health, drawing on traditional experience and other scientific knowledge’ (our definition).
6For example, see Douglas Guthrie, ‘Plants as Remedies: The Debt of Medicine to Botany’, Transactions of the Botanical Society of Edinburgh 39, no. 2 (1961): 184–95; Karen M. Reeds, Botany in Medieval and Renaissance Universities (New York: Garland, 1991).
7See Agnes Arber, Herbals, Their Origin and Evolution: A Chapter in the History of Botany, 1470–1670, 3rd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); Eleanor S. Rohde, The Old English Herbals, reprint of the 1922 ed. (New York: Dover Publications, 1971).
8For example, a 1648 transcript of plants in the Oxford Botanical Garden is reproduced in A Catalogue of the Plants Growing in the University of Oxford Botanic Garden and Harcourt Arboretum (Oxford: University of Oxford Botanic Garden, 1999). Lists of names for plants include Tony Hunt, Plant Names of Medieval England (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1989) and Geoffrey Grigson, The Englishman’s Flora, facsimile of 1955 ed. (London: Phoenix House, 1987). For an example of a modern listing of orally remembered plant remedies, see Gabrielle Hatfield, Country Remedies: Traditional East Anglian Plant Remedies of the Twentieth Century (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1994).
9Maud Grieve, A Modern Herbal: The Medicinal, Culinary, Cosmetic and Economic Properties, Cultivation and Folklore of Herbs, Grasses, Fungi, Shrubs and Trees with All Their Modern Scientific Uses, ed. C. F. Leyel, reprint of the 1931 ed. (London: Peregrine Books, 1976).
10Grieve, Modern Herbal, editor’s introduction, xiii.
11Graeme Tobyn, Alison Denham and Margaret Whitelegg, The Western Herbal Tradition: 2000 Years of Medicinal Plant Knowledge (Edinburgh: Churchill Livingstone/Elsevier, 2011).
12Friedrich A. Fluckiger and Daniel Hanbury, Pharmacographia: A History of the Principal Drugs of Vegetable Origin, Met with in Great Britain and British India (London: Macmillan, 1874).
13These organizations have regular publications. A further body links numerous country-based interest groups, the International Society for the History of Pharmacy, http://www.histpharm.org/iggp.htm (accessed 17 June 2013).
14Alain Touwaide, ‘Therapeutic Strategies: Drugs’, in Western Medical Thought from Antiquity to the Middle Ages, ed. Mirko D. Grmek (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 259–73. For classical medicine, see John Scarborough, Roman Medicine (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1969); Jerry Stannard, ‘Hippocratic Pharmacology’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine 35 (Nov.–Dec. 1961): 497–518.
15Miles Weatherall, ‘Drug Treatment and the Rise in Pharmacology’, in The Cambridge Illustrated History of Medicine, ed. Roy Porter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 277; Ilya Raskin et al., ‘Plants and Human Health in the Twenty-First Century’, Trends in Biotechnology 20, no. 12 (2002): 522–31.
16For example, see Teresa McLean, Medieval English Gardens (London: Barrie and Jenkins, 1989); Carole Rawcliffe, ‘“Delectable Sightes and Fragrant Smelles”: Gardens and Health in Late Medieval and Early Modern England’, Garden History 36, no. 1 (2008): 3–21.
17Andrew Wear, Knowledge and Practice in English Medicine, 1550–1680 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 62–3.
18Leah Knight, Of Books and Botany in Early Modern England: Sixteenth-Century Plants and Print Culture (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009); Charles Webster, ‘The Medical Faculty and the Physic Garden’, in The History of the University of Oxford, Vol. V: The Eighteenth Century, ed. Lucy S. Sutherland and Leslie G. Mitchell (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), 683–723.
19See, for example, Sue Minter, The Apothecaries Garden: A History of Chelsea Physic Garden (Stroud: Sutton, 2000).
20For example, Clifford M. Foust, Rhubarb: The Wondrous Drug (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992); Fiametta Rocco, The Miraculous Fever Tree: Malaria, Medicine and the Cure That Changed the World (New York: HarperCollins, 2003). See also the background to modern drugs arising from plants: for example, Jordan Goodman and Vivien Walsh, The Story of Taxol: Nature and Politics in the Pursuit of an Anti-Cancer Drug (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). For studies relating to colonial trade, see Londa Schiebinger, ed., Plants and Empire: Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004).
21David B. Haycock and Patrick Wallis, Quackery and Commerce in Seventeenth-Century London: The Proprietary Medicine Business of Anthony Daffy (London: The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL, 2005); Steven King, ‘Accessing Drugs in the Eighteenth-Century Regions’, in From Physick to Pharmacology: Five Hundred Years of British Drug Retailing, ed. Louise H. Curth (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 49–78; Patrick Wallis, ‘Exotic Drugs and English Medicine: England’s Drug Trade, c. 1550–c. 1800’ (Working Paper No. 143/10: London School of Economics, July 2010), 26.
22A brief survey using keywords of ‘herbal’+‘medicine’ in a search of the PubMed journal article database (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed [accessed 6 June 2011]) suggested that new research publications between 2000 and 2010 increased from less than 1,000 to upwards of 3,000 articles per annum. Many of these publications were ethnopharmacological in nature. For a view on history from ethnopharmacologists, see Michael Heinrich et al., ‘Ethnobotany and Ethnopharmacology – Interdisciplinary Links with the Historical Sciences’, Journal of Ethnopharmacology 107, no. 2 (2006): 157–60.
23Michael Adams et al., ‘Malaria in the Renaissance: Remedies from European Herbals from the 16th and 17th Century’, Journal of Ethnopharmacology 133, no. 2 (2011): 278–88; Michael Adams et al., ‘Medicinal Herbs for the Treatment of Rheumatic Disorders – a Survey of European Herbals From the 16th and 17th Century’, Journal of Ethnopharmacology 121, no. 3 (2009): 343–59; Melina G. Giorgetti and Eliana Rodrigues, ‘Brazilian Plants with Possible Action on the Central Nervous System – a Study of Historical Sources from the 16th to 19th Century’, Journal of Ethnopharmacology 109, no. 19 (2007): 338–47.
24Jürg Gertsch, ‘How Scientific Is the Science of Ethnopharmacology? Historical Perspectives and Epistemological Problems’, Journal of Ethnopharmacology 122, no. 2 (2009): 177; Elizabeth M. Williamson, ‘Synergy and Other Interactions in Phytomedicines’, Phytomedicine 8, no. 5 (2001): 401–9; Raskin et al., ‘Plants and Human Health’, 529.
25Eric J. Buenz et al., ‘Searching Historical Herbal Texts for Potential New Drugs’, British Medical Journal 333, no. 7582 (2006): 1314–15.
26Joao B. Calixto, ‘Twenty-Five Years of Research on Medicinal Plants in Latin America: A Personal View’, Journal of Ethnopharmacology 100, nos 1–2 (2005): 131–4; Andreas-Holger Maehle, ‘Peruvian Bark: From Specific Febrifuge to Universal Remedy’, Clio Medica 87 (1999): 223–309.
27Paula De Vos, ‘European Materia Medica in Historical Texts: Longevity of a Tradition and Implications for Future Use’, Journal of Ethnopharmacology 132, no. 1 (2010): 28–47.
28For example, see Klaus Bergdolt, Wellbeing: A Cultural History of Healthy Living, trans. Jane Dewhurst (Cambridge: Polity, 2008).
29Jane O’Hara-May, ‘Foods or Medicines? A Study in the Relationship between Foodstuffs and Materia Medica from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century’, Transactions of the British Society for the History of Pharmacy 1, no. 2 (1971): 61–97.
30Paul H. Freedman, Out of the East: Spices and the Medieval Imagination (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008).
31Mary E. Fissell, Patients, Power, and the Poor in Eighteenth-Century Bristol (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 27. See also Joan Lane, A Social History of Medicine: Health, Healing and Disease in England, 1750–1950 (London: Routledge, 2001). For more on patient–practitioner relationships, see Roy Porter, ed., Patients and Practitioners: Lay Perceptions of Medicine in Pre-Industrial Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).
32Rebecca Flemming, Medicine and the Making of Roman Women: Gender, Nature, and Authority from Celsus to Galen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); Monica H. Green, Women’s Healthcare in the Medieval West: Texts and Contexts (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000); Monica H. Green, ‘Gendering the History of Women’s Healthcare’, Gender and History 20, no. 3 (2008): 487–518; Lisa W. Smith, ‘The Relative Duties of a Man: Domestic Medicine in England and France, c. 1685–1740’, Journal of Family History 31, no. 3 (2006): 237–56.
33Elaine Leong and Sara Pennell, ‘Recipe Collections and the Currency of Medical Knowledge in the Early Modern “Medical Marketplace”’, in Medicine and the Market in England and Its Colonies, c. 1450–c. 1850, ed. Mark S. R. Jenner and Patrick Wallis (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 133–52.
34Anne Stobart, ‘The Making of Domestic Medicine: Gender, Self-Help and Therapeutic Determination in Household Healthcare in South-West England in the Late Seventeenth Century’ (Unpublished PhD thesis, Middlesex University, 2008).
35Nina L. Etkin, ed., Eating on the Wild Side: The Pharmacologic, Ecologic, and Social Implications of Using Noncultigens (Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 1994).
36Anthony B. Cunningham, Applied Ethnobotany: People, Wild Plant Use and Conservation (London: Earthscan, 2001).
37For discussion of the concept of a ‘medical marketplace’, see Mark S. R. Jenner and Patrick Wallis, ‘The Medical Marketplace’, in Jenner and Wallis, Medicine and the Market, 1–23. For upwards revised estimates of numbers of medical practitioners, see also Ian Mortimer, The Dying and the Doctors: The Medical Revolution in Seventeenth-Century England (Woodbridge: Royal Historical Society/Boydell, 2009).
38Jacalyn Duffin, Lovers and Livers: Disease Concepts in History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005); Nancy G. Siraisi, Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine: An Introduction to Knowledge and Practice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990).
39Juanita G. L. Burnby, A Study of the English Apothecary from 1660–1760, Medical History Supplement, vol. 3 (London: Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, 1983).
40Barbara Griggs, Green Pharmacy: A History of Herbal Medicine (London: Jill Norman and Hobhouse, 1981).
41Wear, Knowledge and Practice, see ch. 2, ‘Remedies’.
42Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century England (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1971); Keith Thomas, Man and the Natural World: Changing Attitudes in England 1500–1800 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984).
43For example, Oswald Cockayne, Spoon and Sparrow, Spendein and Psar, Fundere and Passer: Or, English Roots in the Greek, Latin, and Hebrew (London: Parker, Son, and Bourn, 1861); Gabrielle Hatfield, Hatfield’s Herbal: The Secret History of British Plants (London: Allen Lane, 2007); Enid Porter, Cambridgeshire Customs and Folklore: With Fenland Material Provided by W. H. Barrett (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969); T. F. Thiselton-Dyer, The Folk-Lore of Plants, facsimile of 1889 ed. (Felinfach: Llanerch Publishers, 1994); Roy Vickery, Garlands, Conkers and Mother-Die: British and Irish Plant-Lore (London: Continuum, 2010).
44David E. Allen and Gabrielle Hatfield, Medicinal Plants in Folk Tradition: An Ethnobotany of Britain and Ireland (Portland: Timber Press, 2004), 15–19.
45For example, see Alix Cooper, Inventing the Indigenous: Local Knowledge and Natural History in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Lorraine Daston and Katherine Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature 1150–1750 (New York: Zone Books, 1998).
46See Leong and Pennell, ‘Recipe Collections’.
47See William Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature: Books of Secrets in Medieval and Early Modern Culture (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994); William R. Newman and Anthony Grafton, Secrets of Nature: Astrology and Alchemy in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001).
48Raskin et al., ‘Plants and Human Health’, 522.
49John Gerard, The Herball or Generall Historie of Plantes… Very Much Enlarged and Amended by Thomas Iohnson Citizen and Apothecarye of London (London: Printed by Adam Islip, Ioice Norton and Richard Whitakers, 1633), 4.
50Griggs, Green Pharmacy, 57–8.
51Allen and Hatfield, Medicinal Plants, 46. For discussion about earlier antiquarian-style historical approaches in relation to science, see Eileen K. Cheng, Historiography: An Introductory Guide (London: Continuum, 2012), 19–22.
52Keith Bakx, ‘The “Eclipse” of Folk Medicine in Western Society’, Sociology of Health and Illness 13, no. 1 (1991): 21; Roger Cooter, ‘Alternative Medicine, Alternative Cosmology’, in Studies in the History of Alternative Medicine, ed. Roger Cooter (Basingstoke: Macmillan in association with St Antony’s College, Oxford, 1988), 63–78.
53Roberta Bivins, ‘Histories of Heterodoxy’, in The Oxford Handbook of the History of Medicine, ed. Mark Jackson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 578.
54Ibid., 580.
55Ibid., 579.
56Mervyn J. Eadie, ‘The Antiepileptic Materia Medica of Pediacus Dioscorides’, Journal of Clinical Neurosciences 11, no. 7 (2004): 697–701.
57Lawrence I. Conrad et al., The Western Medical Tradition: 800 BC to AD 1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 165, 232.
58Wear, Knowledge and Practice, 22.
59Rebecca Laroche, Medical Authority and Englishwomen’s Herbal Texts, 1550–1650 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009).
60There are methodological and other difficulties in assessing such therapies in the form of randomized controlled trials, although the quality of research designs is not necessarily less than in drug trials. See L. Nartey et al., ‘Matched-Pair Study Showed Higher Quality of Placebo-Controlled Trials in Western Phytotherapy Than Conventional Medicine’, Journal of Clinical Epidemiology 60, no. 8 (2007), 787–94.
61Mark Jackson, introduction to Jackson, Oxford Handbook, 6, 13. See also Frank Huisman and John H. Warner, ‘Medical Histories’, in Locating Medical History: The Stories and Their Meanings (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), ed. Frank Huisman and John H. Warner, 1–30.
62Roger Cooter, ‘“Framing” the End of the Social History of Medicine’, in Huisman and Warner, Locating Medical History, 310–37.
63Susan M. Reverby and David Rosner, ‘Beyond the Great Doctors Revisited: A Generation of the “New” Social History of Medicine’, in Huisman and Warner, Locating Medical History, 167–93.
64John C. Burnham, What Is Medical History? (Cambridge: Polity, 2005), 141.
65Ludmilla Jordanova, ‘The Social Construction of Medical Knowledge’, in Huisman and Warner, Locating Medical History, 338, 352.
66David B. Troy, ed., Remington: The Science and Practice of Pharmacy, 21st ed. (Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott, Williams and Wilkins, 2006), 9. On Paracelsus, see also Allen G. Debus, ‘The Medico-Chemical World of the Paracelsians’, in Changing Perspectives in the History of Science: Essays in Honour of Joseph Needham (London: Heinemann, 1973), ed. Mikulas Teich and Robert Young, 85–99; Charles Webster, ‘Alchemical and Paracelsian Medicine’, in Health, Medicine and Mortality in the Sixteenth Century, ed. Charles Webster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 301–34.
67For authoritative guides on known constituents and potential interactions of herbal medicines, see Simon Mills and Kerry Bone, The Essential Guide to Herbal Safety (St Louis, MO: Elsevier/ Churchill Livingstone, 2005); Elizabeth Williamson, Samuel Driver and Karen Baxter, Stockley’s Herbal Medicines Interactions (London: Pharmaceutical Press, 2009).
68Philip D. Curtin, ‘Overspecialization and Remedies’, in The Backbone of History: Health and Nutrition in the Western Hemisphere, ed. Richard H. Steckel and Jerome C. Rose (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 603–8.
69Frances Watkins et al., ‘Anglo-Saxon Pharmacopoeia Revisited: A Potential Treasure in Drug Discovery’, Drug Discovery Today 16, nos 23/24 (2011): 1069–75.
70Ibid., 1070.
71An example of a text which has been much debated is John M. Riddle, Goddesses, Elixirs, and Witches: Plants and Sexuality Throughout Human History (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). See the discussion in John K. Crellin, ‘Revisiting Eve’s Herbs: Reflections on Therapeutic Uncertainties’, in Herbs and Healers from the Ancient Mediterranean through the Medieval West: Essays in Honor of John M. Riddle, ed. Anne Van Arsdall and Timothy Graham (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), 307–28.
72H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison, eds., Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). The online reference source is at http://www.oxfordreference.com/ (accessed 2 September 2013).