In this first section we bring together contributors who have a starting point in revisiting original texts, some using comparative textual analysis to examine the changes in subsequent versions and editions, and all providing new perspectives on original sources. Some of the texts considered have been cited through the ages as authorities in various medical and health contexts. Thus, their provenance, authorship, alterations and reception can all provide us with valuable insight into beliefs and activities of their time. Although the analysis of textual sources is a traditional method of researching medical history, there is still much more scope for researchers interested in the history of herbal medicine to revisit well-known texts, as well as to discover new ones, and to discuss them from a perspective of how plants were understood and used as medicines in history.
Historical studies of medicine are often divided into time periods, for ease of description, although there are obviously overlaps in many areas. Sources for the study of classical medicine range from texts to artefacts. Greco-Roman treatments were characterized by plant remedies, diet and lifestyle advice and a belief in the healing power of nature, vis medicatrix naturae.1 Classical writers about medicine flagged up the important and longstanding role of herbs as remedies in health care, and Celsus noted the ubiquity of such knowledge:
Just as agriculture promises nourishment to healthy bodies, so does the Art of Medicine promise health to the sick. Nowhere is this art wanting, for the most uncivilized nations have had knowledge of herbs, and other things to hand for the aiding of wounds and diseases.2
Alongside details of plants, we have writers providing a context of theory and belief for ancient medicine, such as Rebecca Flemming and Helen King who examine perspectives on disease, particularly of women’s complaints.3 We should also note that past descriptions of medicinal plants in ancient texts can be economical on detail, and that botanical identification is an area requiring considerable skill.
Throughout the medieval period, medicinal information was eagerly sought and repeatedly copied. Scholars have sought to transcribe medieval manuscripts, many described as herbals, and interpret their meaning.4 Medieval texts sometimes based information on that found in the classical Greek texts, but also on texts which had been adapted and substantially added to in the Islamic world.5 In the late medieval period there was a rapidly growing popular interest in medical learning and in the use of remedies, as opposed to having a focus on the regulation of lifestyle and diet laid down by the classical medical writers.6 Further overviews of the development of the English herbal were produced, in the 1920s and 1930s.7
The early modern period, usually considered as from 1500 to 1800 CE, saw some major shifts in thinking about medicine, although theory and knowledge were not always immediately reflected in changes in practice. Significant developments, aside from advances in scientific understanding, included further voyages of discovery, the development of botany, the establishment of gardens, a great increase in trade in medicines, the origins of professionalization, a widespread demand for printed texts and dissemination of changing perceptions of nature.8
Many of the original texts under discussion have now been made available online.9 In addition, research aids such as online dictionaries for Greek and Latin are also readily available.10
In this section, Vicki Pitman provides a firm grounding in early Greek medicine, considering evidence of models, methods and materia medica in the texts of the Hippocratic corpus to provide new perspectives. Her study informs the understanding of subsequent scholars and practitioners, and she argues that the survival of many aspects of holism can still be appreciated today, so that continuity with some ancient practices is not entirely broken. Anne Van Arsdall considers scholarly approaches and medieval herbal texts with a view to evaluating the contents of texts for information on practices concerning medicinal plants. Her chapter raises interesting possibilities of further interpretation drawing on the knowledge and experience of modern-day practitioners. Moving forward to the printed text and the early modern period, Elaine Hobby uses literary analysis to consider early-modern midwifery manuals for evidence of changes in perspectives and practice involving herbal medicine. Her study includes advice for those interested in using literary criticism, including the pitfalls and problems which may occur. Another study of changes in the detail in texts comes from Graeme Tobyn, who has examined the way in which the widely acclaimed publication of Nicholas Culpeper was compiled, revealing the influences and intentions of the originator. His research leads him to dispute beliefs that Culpeper’s English Physitian is original and he argues that it draws largely from the work of John Parkinson.
1Jacalyn Duffin, History of Medicine: A Scandalously Short Introduction (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), 93–6.
2Cited in Mirko D. Grmek, ed., Western Medical Thought from Antiquity to the Middle Ages (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 3.
3Rebecca Flemming, Medicine and the Making of Roman Women: Gender, Nature, and Authority from Celsus to Galen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); Helen King, Hippocrates’ Woman: Reading the Female Body in Ancient Greece (London: Routledge, 1998).
4George Henslow, Medical Works of the Fourteenth Century: Together with a List of Plants Recorded in Contemporary Writings, with Their Identifications (London: Chapman and Hall, 1899); F. W. T. Hunger, ed., The Herbal of Pseudo-Apuleius: From the Ninth-Century Manuscript in the Abbey of Monte Cassino (Codex Casinensis 97) (Leiden: Brill, 1935); Jerry Stannard and Richard Kay, eds., Herbs and Herbalism in the Middle Ages and Renaissance (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999); Anne Van Arsdall, Medieval Herbal Remedies: The Old English Herbarium and Anglo-Saxon Medicine (New York: Routledge, 2002).
5For more on the unsung contribution of Islamic writers to the history of Western medicine, see ch. 4 in this book.
6Faye M. Getz, ed., Healing and Society in Medieval England: A Middle English Translation of the Pharmaceutical Writings of Gilbertus Anglicus (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991), xxii.
7Agnes Arber, Herbals, Their Origin and Evolution: A Chapter in the History of Botany, 1470–1670, 3rd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); Eleanour S. Rohde, The Old English Herbals, reprint of the 1922 ed. (New York: Dover Publications, 1971).
8An excellent overview is provided by Andrew Wear, Knowledge and Practice in English Medicine, 1550–1680 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
9The databases can be accessed through organizations such as Gallica in France (http://gallica.bnf.fr), the Wellcome Library in the UK (http://wellcomelibrary.org/), the Gutenberg Project in the USA (http://www.gutenberg.org/) and the National Library of Medicine in the USA (http://www.nlm.nih.gov) (all accessed 28 October 2013). Subscription-based organizations providing databases of digitized texts, such as Early English Books Online, offer further detailed access to complete sets of images of original texts, often with accompanying transcriptions (http://eebo.chadwyck.com).
10For example: Perseus Search Tools, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/search (accessed 28 October 2013).