The Art of the Botanist 2. Early printed works. Herbals The OED defines a herbal as ‘a book...

The Art of the Botanist

2. Early printed works

Herbals

• The OED defines a herbal as ‘a book containing the names and descriptions of herbs, or of plants in general, with their properties and virtues’. It was essential not only to the herbalist, botanist, physician and apothecary, but also invaluable go the housewife, as in the 16th century only the rich could afford adequate medical attendance, and most people used the herbal in the home for looking up remedies for various ailments.

Herbals (continued)

• It also supplied information about the herbs needed in the kitchen and stillroom, and provided remedies for such varied troubles as evil dreams, sleeplessness, melancholy, and clothes moths. Furthermore the lady of the house went to its pages for knowledge upon how to have ‘a fayre face’, stains for the nails, and dyes for the hair.

Otto Brunfels’ Herbarum Vivae Eicones

• First volume of Herbarum Vivae Eicones (Living Portraits of Plants) published in 1530. (Volume 2 in 1532 and Volume 3 in 1536 – although prefaces for vols 1 and 2 are dated 1530 and 1531, and both might have appeared in 1532).

• Brunfels was an industrious gleaner of miscellaneous material from the well-worn pages of ‘ancient and trustworthy authors’, with additional snippets from more recent Italian sources.

• Text illustrated with ‘new and really lifelike figures’ – but as he tried to base these on Dioscorides, and the flora of the eastern Mediterranean being different from the Rhineland, this causes confusion!

Illustrations in Brunfels’ herbal

• Hans Weiditz (Johannes Guidictius) was employed as draughtsman and engraver, probably with a staff of assistants. This artist, instead of following the traditional plan of copying the drawings of his predecessors, drew from the plants themselves; and with these realistic illustrations, from which it is possible to identify a large number of the species of plants shown, Brunfels’ herbal is considered to have opened the botanical renaissance.

Otto Brunfels

• Born in Mainz in 1489.• After some years in a Carthusian monastery he

became a convert to Lutheranism in 1521.• Settled down as school master and preacher in

Strasbourg. Appointed town physician in Berne in 1532.

• Herbarum Vivae Eicones a product of his ‘leisure hours’. Final volume published two years after his death.

Brunfels: Herbarum Vivae Eicones

• 1530-1536• Daffodil (Narcissus

pseudonarcissus) and Spring Snowflake (Leucojum vernum)

Narcissus pseudonarcissus and Leucojum vernum


• 1530-1536• Waterlily (Nymphaea

alba)

Nymphaea alba


• 1530-1536• Violets (Viola canina

and V. odorata)

Viola canina and V. odorata

‘Helleborus niger’, H. viridis, Green Hellebore, in Brunfels

‘Synnaw’, Alchemilla vulgaris, Ladies’-mantle, in Brunfels

Lady’s mantle in later herbals

• Gerard (1597): “It is applied to wounds … it stoppeth bleeding, and also the overmuch flowing of the natural sicknesse: it keeps down maidens paps or dugs, and when they be too great or flaggy it maketh them lesser or harder.”

• Culpeper (1652): almost word-for-word from Gerard (whom he doesn’t cite). In addition: “ the distilled water drunk for twenty days together helps conception, and to retain the birth if the woman do sometimes also sit in a bath made of the decoction of the herb … It quickly heals all green wounds, not suffering any corruption to remain behind, and cures old sores, though fistulous and hollow.”

Leonhart Fuchs (1501-1566)

• The author of the De Historia Stirpium, (On the History of Plants) Leonhart Fuchs (1501-1566), is known as the third of the German fathers of Botany, after Otto Brunfels and Jerome Bock (whose 1539 New Kreütter Bůch appeared in illustrated form in 1546. As an author, the German botanist and Lutheran pastor preferred to disguise his name Bock, meaning ‘he-goat’, under its Graeco-Latin equivalent, Hieronymus Tragus).

Strawberry, Fragaria, in Bock


• Fuchs work was greatly inspired by the Herbarum vivae eicones (1530-6) of Brunfels; based upon personal observation, Brunfels work was pioneering in dramatically changing the quality of botanical illustration. Fuchs' great herbal, however, was conceived on a much larger scale than the herb books of his immediate predecessors.


• Born in Wemding in Bavaria in 1501.• Opened his own school there at the age of 16!• Went to Ingolstadt University in 1519 to study classics,

philosophy and subsequently medicine.• By 1524, Master of Arts and Doctor of Medicine, and a

fervent protestant.• Medical career took him to Munich, Ingolstadt and

Ansbach.• Appointed Professor of Medicine at Tübingen in 1535

where he spent the rest of his life.

Fuchs’ Herbal

• De Historia Stirpium, published by Isingrin of Basel in 1542, is a folio of breathtaking splendour. Like most botanical books of its time, “Fuchs’ Herbal” (as it is commonly known) consists largely of “commentaries” on Dioscorides. His aim was to reproduce each plant from life, and he stated in his dedicatory epistle that this was done for no other reason than that 'a picture expresses things more surely and fixes them more deeply in the mind than the bare words of the text'. Each illustration was therefore based upon the appearance of the living plant; furthermore, 'we have not allowed the craftsmen so to indulge their whims as to cause the drawing not to correspond accurately to the truth.’

Fuchs as botanist

• Fuchs was a field botanist. His herbal contains various asides such as the recording – from personal experience(?) – that the sap of the celery-leaved buttercup (Ranunculus sceleratus) burns the skin, and was used for this purpose by ‘roguish beggars, who ought to be packed off to the devil’ to produce bogus sores to deceive the innocent compassionate. Most of his work, however, is that of an industrious and methodical compiler, rather than an investigator.

Ranunculus sceleratus

Fuchs: De Historia Stirpium

• Asparagus (Asparagus sylvestris)

Fuchs: De Historia Stirpium.Cherry and Rose

Fuchs on carrots

• Fuchs in 1542 described, in Latin, red and yellow garden carrots and wild carrots, but names them all Pastinaca. Fuchs illustrates red and yellow carrots, although the red is definitely shaded towards purple.

Fuchs on carrots

The artists involved with Fuchs’ Herbal

• More than 500 full-page woodcuts. Preceded by a portrait of the author in doctor’s robes, and closing with portraits of the artists – Albrecht Meyer, who drew the plants from nature, Heinrich Füllmeyer, who transferred the drawings to the blocks, and Veit Rudolf Speckle who did the cutting.

Leonhart Fuchs

Meyer, Füllmeyer and Speckle

Additional illustrations

• A collection of drawings for the first edition, and two further volumes not published, now in the library in Vienna. Thought this had been lost. On Fuchs’ death, passed to his son. For sale for 300 gulden by a Viennese bookseller in 1732. Re-appeared at a booksellers congress in Vienna in 1954. Contains 1525 drawings in nine folio volumes.

Meyer for Fuchs

• Greater Celandine (Chelidonium majus)

The first English printed herbal

• The first book devoted entirely to herbs to be printed in England is a small quarto volume published anonymously, in 1525, by the London printer Richard Banckes. It is in black letter, contains no illustrations, and is often referred to as ‘Banckes’s herbal’. The origin of the work is unknown, but it is probably derived from an unknown medieval manuscript.

Banckes’s herbal

• The title-page reads: ‘ Here begynnyth a newe mater, the whiche sheweth and treateth of ye vertues & proprytes of herbes, the whiche is called an herball.’ On the last page we find the words ‘Imprynted by me Rycharde Banckes, dwellynge in London, a lytel fro ye Stockes in ye Pultry.’

• Reprinted in 1526 by Banckes, and during the next 35 years a large number of editions of this small book came from the presses of more than ten London printers under various titles.

Rosemary in Banckes’s herbal• In cases where the virtues of the herbs are not strictly medicinal, they are

described in Banckes‘s herbal with more than a touch of poetry. For example, for Rosemary he states ‘take the flowres and make powder therof and bynde it to the ryght arme in a lynen clothe, and it shall make the lyght and mery... Also take the flowres and put them in a chest amonge youre clothes or amonge bokes and moughtes shall not hurte them.... Also boyle the leves in whyte wyne and wasshe thy face therwith...thou shall have a fayre face. Also put the leves under thy beddes heed, and thou shalbe delyvered of all evyll dremes.... Also take the leves and put them into a vessel of wyne...yf thou sell that wyne, thou shall have good lucke and spede in the sale.... Also make the a box of the wood and smell to it and it shall preserne [preserve] thy youthe. Also put therof in thy doores or in thy howse and thou shalbe without daunger of Adders and other venymous serpentes. Also make the a barell therof and drynke thou of the drynke that standeth therin and thou nedes to fere no poyson that shall hurte ye, and yf thou set it in thy garden kepe it honestly for it is moche profytable.’

Rosemary

First printed illustrated English herbal

• The first illustrated book on plants to be published in England is The grete herball of 1526, which came from the press of Peter Treveris. A much costlier production than Banckes’s herbal, it is better known, and more copies appear to exist, but it lacks much of the simpler charm of the earlier work.

The grete herball

• The grete herball doesn’t claim to be original. At the end of the index there is a note that it ‘is translated out ye Frensshe in to Englysshe’, and it is in the main a translation of the French Le grant herbier. The introduction and conclusion seem to be derived from the German Herbarius and the Ortus sanitatis. The use of English rather than Latin this early is interesting. Between 1500 and 1640 a higher proportion of scientific works were printed in the vernacular in England than in any other country except Italy. For a book aimed at an unlearned public it was, of course, almost obligatory to use English.

The grete herball: title page of 1526 edition

The grete herball: title page of 1561 edition

Illustrations in The grete herball

• Contains nearly 500 small illustrations – mostly of plants, although figures of animals, minerals, and some other subjects are included. The majority of the woodcuts are reduced and degenerate copies of those in the German Herbarius, and the Ortus sanitatis, and have little importance in the history of botanical illustration.

The grete herball

Ivory in The grete herball (I couldn’t resist it!)

Mythology and Christianity

• In The grete herball Greek mythology finds a place, side by side with Christianity. The discovery of wormwood is attributed, as in the herbal of Apuleius Platonicus, to Diana, who gave the plant to the centaurs; but, in the event of being bitten by a mad dog, the sufferer is recommended to appeal to the Virgin Mary before employing any remedy: “As sone as ye be byten go to the chyrche, and make thy offrynge to our lady, and pray here to helpe and hele the. Than rubbe ye sore with a newe clothe.”

William Turner

• William Turner 1548 set out to produce reliable lists of English plants and animals, which he published as Libellus de re herbaria novus in 1538

• Clergyman, physician, and naturalist, born in Morpeth, Northumberland, NE England, UK. A fellow of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, he became a Protestant, and to escape religious persecution in England travelled extensively abroad, studying medicine and botany in Italy.

• He is the author of the first original English works on plants, including The names of herbes in Greke, Latin, Englishe Duche & Frenche (1548) and A new herball (published in three parts, 1551, 1562 and 1568).

• He is often called the ‘Father of British botany.’

Libellus de re herbaria novus

William Turner Garden, Morpeth

• The William Turner Garden is a charming tribute to the Father of English Botany who was born in Morpeth in 1508. Situated on the edge of the Formal Gardens in Carlisle Park.

• In this garden you'll discover the different features of gardening and medicine in Turner's Tudor times. The Physic Garden contains medicinal herbs that Turner would have prescribed. The Introductions Border contains plants that were first brought to England in the 16th Century. The Knot Garden is a miniature version of the type of formal garden that became popular in Tudor times.

William Turner Garden, Morpeth

Turner’s Herbal

• A New Herball, (1551) is the first part of Turner's great work. These volumes gave the first clear, systematic survey of English plants, and with their admirable woodcuts (mainly copied from Fuchs' 1542 De historia Stirpium) and detailed observations based on Turner's own field studies put the herbal on an altogether higher footing than in earlier works. At the same time, however, Turner included an account of their "uses and vertues," and in his preface admits that some will accuse him of divulging to the general public what should have been reserved for a professional audience.

Turner’s Herball (1551, with the Royal Arms at the top and ER –Edwardus Rex- for Edward VI)

Turner on carrots• In the Names of Herbes (1548 - An index of English names, and an

identification of the plants enumerated) Turner made the following entries:"Daucus.There are many kyndes of Daucus after Dioscorides, three at the least, wherof I knowe none suerly but one, whiche is called in latin pastinaca syluestris, in english wild carot & in greeke Staphilinos agrios, for the other kindes ye may use carawey seede, or carot seede. Some learned me not without a cause hold that both the Saxifrages, that is the englishe, and the Italion may be occupied for Dauco. Daucus is sharpe and heateth."

• Pastinaca.Pastinaca is called in greeke Staphilinos in englishe a Carot, in duche pasteney, in frenche Cariottes. Carettes growe in al countreis in plentie.”

Cuckoo-pint in Turner

Arum maculatum: Cuckoo-pint

Rembert Dodoens (1517-1585)• The famous Flemish physician and botanist Rembertus Dodonaeus is best

known for his herbal Cruydeboeck (more precisely: Cruijdeboeck, as the title is printed on the title page), written in old Flemish and published in 1554. The scans that follow were made from a coloured copy, which is in the library of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, Holland. All wood cuts, initials of the chapters and title pages are hand coloured, by the Dutch artist Hans Liefrinck (1520-1573). His work was illustrated by 715 woodcuts of plants, including many copies from those in Fuch's herbal and he used Fuchs as his model for the description of each plant. The method of arrangement is his own. He indicates the localities and times of flowering in the Low Countries, information that could not have been derived from an earlier writer. It is written in Latin and later translated and enhanced by Henry Lyte.

Yellow, red and wild carrots

Henry Lyte (1529-1607)

• Lyte was descended from an old family of his name living at Lytescary in Somerset. Born 1529. Student at Oxford, but probably didn’t take his degree. Travelled on the continent, then returned ‘to his patrimony where, by the advantage of a good foundation of literature made in the university and abroad, he became a most excellent scholar in several sorts of learning’ (Wood, Athenae oxoniensis). Managed his father’s estates in Somerset from 1559 (succeeded to the estate in 1566 on the death of his father) and died in 1607.

Lytes Cary, Somerset

Lyte’s Herbal• Henry Lyte published A nievve herball (1578), which was a

translation of de l’Écluses’s French version of Dodoens’s Cruydeboeck (Antwerp, 1564). This herbal, or historie of plants was subtitled "Wherein is contained the whole discourse and perfect description of all sorts of herbs and plants.”

• He did not perhaps add very greatly to the knowledge of English botany, but he did a valuable service in introducing Dodoens' herbal into England.

Lyte’s Herbal

• The title of Lyte's book is as follows: 'A Nievve Herball or Historie of Plantes : wherin is contayned the whole discourse and perfect description of all sortes of Herbes and Plantes : their divers and sundry kindes : their straunge Figures, Fashions, and Shapes : their Names, Natures, Operations, and Vertues : and that not onely of those which are here growyng in this our Countrie of Englande, but of all others also of forrayne Realmes, commonly used in Physicke. First set foorth in the Doutche or Almaigne tongue, by that learned D. Rembert Dodoens, Physition to the Emperour : And nowe first translated out of French into English, by Henry Lyte Esquyer.’

Lyte’s Herbal

Carnations and pinks in Lyte

Lyte on carrots

Lyte on carrots• The Kinds - There be three sortes of Carrots, yealow and red whereof two be

tame of the garden, the third is wild growing of it selfe. • The Description - • 1.The yealow Carrot hath dark greene leaves, all cut and hackt almost like the

leaves of Chervil, but a great deal browner, larger, stronger, and smaller cut. The root is thicke and long, yealow both without and within and is used to be eaten in meates.

• 2. The red Carrot is like to the aforesaid in the cuts of his leaves, and in stalks, flowers and seed. The root is likewise long and thicke, but of a purple red colour both within and without.

• 3. The wilde is not much unlike garden Carrot, in leaves stalks and flowers, saving the leaves be a little rougher, and not so much cut or jagged. In the middle of the flowry tufts amongst the white flowers groweth one or two little purple marks or specks. The seede is rougher and the root smaller and harder than the other Carrots.

Lyte on carrots• The Place - 1 & 2 the manured or tamed Carrot is sowne in gardens; 3 the

wild groweth in the borders of fields, by high waies & paths, and in rough untoiled places.

• The Time -Carrots do flower in June and July, and their seed is ripe in August.

• He went on to describe its vertues which included, "cleaning evil blood"; "seeds to provoketh urine"; "this root hath the power to increase love".

• The roots made into powder helped the "liver, spleen, kidnies and guarded against gravel".

• Wild Carrot provoketh womens flowers, and drunk with wine helped in childbirth. It also good against venom and the bitings & stings of venomous beasts.

• The greene leaves of Carrots "boiled with honey and laid to, do cleanse and mundifie (purify) uncleane and fretting sores" (- a type of poultice).

John Gerard (1545-1612), Gardener and Surgeon

• John Gerard was born at Nantwich in Cheshire in 1545. But at some point prior to 1577 he moved to London, where he would remain for the rest of his life.

• Gardener• He lived in a house in Holborn and his own garden was

probably attached to the house, or it may have been a plot in Fetter Lane (mentioned in the minutes of the Court of the Barber-Surgeons in 1596), leased for that purpose.

• In 1596 he issued a list of the plants he had cultivated in his own garden. This was the first complete catalogue of any one garden ever published.

John Gerard (1545-1612), Gardener

• According to this catalogue, among other things, he grew;• Cowslips, Primula veris

Deadly nightshade, Atropa belladonnaHenbane, Hyoscyamus nigerHouseleek, Sempervivum tectorumMint, Mentha pulegiumPlane treePomegranate tree, Punica granatumPurple foxe gloves, Digitalis purpureaRosa gallicaRosemarie, Rosmarinus officinalisSaffron, Crocus sativusSaxifrage, Saxifraga cuneifoliaTime, Thymus vulgarisValerian, Valeriana officinalisWormwood, Artemisia absinthium


• For twenty years, he superintended the gardens belonging to Lord Burleigh, in the Strand and at Theobalds in Hertfordshire, prior to Lord Burleigh’s death in 1598.

• His interest in Botany was obviously well known to the Barber-Surgeons Company. In 1596 he was commissioned to seek a better place for a ‘fruit-grounde’ for the Barber-Surgeons Company than the current site at East Smithfields.

• In the same year he was appointed Junior Warden of the Barber-Surgeons, he published the work by which his name was made famous, ‘The Herbal, or General Historie of Plants’. Although largely based on the authoritative work of Dodoens, Gerard added about 182 English plants as well as English locations from his own observations and that of his many friends and correspondents. Gerard’s innovation was to add a list of plants discovered by explorers of the New World: this included the potato.


• His vivid and lively prose observations on the beauty of flowers, their medicinal and economic value and contemporary folklore ensured its domination of the herbal market, no new works being published for 36 years.

• He had a good practical knowledge of plants and due to his powerful connections at court and elsewhere was able to add many new and previously unseen plants to his gardens. He drew attention to and popularized botany in a way none of his peers did. He is remembered today for his work on Botany.

John Gerard (1545-1612), Surgeon

• Surgeon• Gerard became a well-regarded surgeon of his time.

He was elected a member of the Court Assistants of the Barber-Surgeons on June 19th, 1595. In 1597 he was appointed Junior Warden. In 1608 he was elected Master of the Barber-Surgeons.

• He died in February 1611-2 and was buried in St. Andrew’s Church Holborn.

Gerard’s Herbal

Title page of Gerard’s Herbal (2nd edition)

Gerard’s Herbal

• Maize or Sweet Corn (Zea mays)

Gerard’s Herbal

• Marigolds (Calendula officinalis)

Gerard’s Herbal

Gerard on carrots

Gerard on carrots• "Of Carrots - Chap 390 • There are two kinds of Pastinaca with jagged leaves, called in English,

Carrots, and of those with jagged narrow leaves on is wilde. • The roote is long thicke and single, of a faire yellow colour, pleasant to be

eaten, and very sweete in taste. There are to be sowen in April; they bring foorth their flowers and seeds the yeere after they be sowen.

• There is another kinde hereof like to be the former in all partes, and differeth from it onely in the colour of the roote, which in this is not yellow, but of a blackish red colour.

• The roote of the yellow Carrot is most commonly boiled with fat flesh and eaten. The nourishment therof is not much, and not verie good.; it is something windie, but not so much as Turneps, and doth so soone as they passe through the bodies. It doth breaketh and consumeth windinesse, provoketh urine, as doth the wilde Carrot.

Gerard on carrots

• "Of Wilde Carrot - Chap 391 • It groweth in untoiled places, flowers in June and July

and the seede is ripe in August. • The seede of this wilde Carrot, and likewise, the root

is hot and drie in the second degree, and doth withall open. The roote boiled and eaten, or boiled with wine, and the decooction drunke, provoketh urine, expelleth the stone, bringeth foorth the birth; it also procureth bodily lust.”

Gerard on carrots

Gerard on mandrake

• Gerard pours scorn on the Mandrake legend. • ‘There have been,' he says, 'many ridiculous

tales brought up of this plant, whether of old wives or runnegate surgeons or phisick mongers, I know not, all which dreames and old wives tales you shall from henceforth cast out your bookes of memorie.’

Parkinson: Paradisi in sole paradisus terrestris (1629)

John Evelyn: Sylva (1664)

Evelyn : Silva (1776 edition)

Hooke: Micrographia (1665)

Malpighi: Anatome plantarum (1675-1679)

Grew: The Anatomy of Plants (1682)

The Art of the Botanist 2. Early printed works. Herbals The OED defines a herbal as ‘a book...

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