CHAPTER I

THE EARLY HISTORY OF BOTANY

1. INTRODUCTORY.

In the present book, the special subject treated is the evolution of the _printed herbal_, between the years 1470 and 1670, but it is impossible to arrive at clear ideas on this subject without some knowledge of the earlier stages in the history of Botany. The first chapter will therefore be devoted to the briefest possible sketch of the progress of Botany before the invention of printing, in order that the position occupied by the Herbal in the history of the science may be realised in its true perspective.

From the very beginning of its existence, the study of plants has been approached from two widely separated standpoints—the philosophical and the utilitarian. Regarded from the first point of view, Botany stands on its own merits, as an integral branch of natural philosophy, whereas, from the second, it is merely a by-product of medicine or agriculture. This distinction, however, is a somewhat arbitrary one; the more philosophical of botanists have not disdained at times to consider the uses of herbs, and those who entered upon the subject, with a purely medical intention, have often become students of plant life for its own sake. At different periods in the evolution of the science, one or other aspect has predominated, but from classical times onwards, it is possible to trace the development of these two distinct lines of inquiry, which have sometimes converged, but more often pursued parallel and unconnected paths.

Botany as a branch of philosophy may be said to have owed its inception to the wonderful mental activity of the finest period of Greek culture. It was at this time that the nature and life of plants first came definitely within the scope of inquiry and speculation.

2. ARISTOTELIAN BOTANY.

Aristotle, Plato’s pupil, concerned himself with the whole field of science, and his influence, especially during the Middle Ages, had a most profound effect on European thought. The greater part of his botanical writings, which belong to the fourth century before Christ, are unfortunately lost, but, from such fragments as remain, it is clear that his interest in plants was of an abstract nature. He held that all living bodies, those of plants as well as of animals, are organs of the soul, through which they exist. It was broad, general speculations, such as these, which chiefly attracted him. He asks _why_ a grain of corn gives rise in its turn to a grain of corn and not to an olive, thus raising a plexus of problems, which, despite the progress of modern science, still baffle the acutest thinkers of the present day.

Aristotle bequeathed his library to his pupil Theophrastus, whom he named as his successor. Theophrastus was well fitted to carry on the traditions of the school, since he had, in earlier years, studied under Plato himself. He produced a ‘History of Plants’ in which Botany is treated in a somewhat more concrete and definite fashion than is the case in Aristotle’s writings. Theophrastus mentions about 450 plants, whereas the number of species in Greece known at the present day is at least 3000. His descriptions, with few exceptions, are meagre, and the identification of the plants to which they refer is a matter of extreme difficulty.

In various points of observation, Theophrastus was in advance of his time. He noticed, for instance, the distinction between centripetal and centrifugal inflorescences—a distinction which does not seem to have again attracted the attention of botanists until the sixteenth century. He was interested in the germination of seeds, and was aware, though somewhat dimly, of the essential differences between the seedling of the Bean and that of the Wheat.

In the Middle Ages, knowledge of Aristotelian botany was brought into western Europe at two different periods,—the ninth and the thirteenth centuries. In the ninth century of the Christian era, Rhabanus Magnentius Maurus, a German writer, compiled an encyclopædia which contained information about plants, indirectly derived from the writings of Theophrastus. Rhabanus actually based his work upon the writings of Isidor of Seville, who lived in the sixth and seventh centuries—Isidor having obtained his botanical data from Pliny, whose knowledge of plants was in turn borrowed from Theophrastus.

The renewal of Aristotelian learning in the thirteenth century was derived less directly from classical writings than was the case with the earlier revival. From the time of Alexander onwards, various Greek schools had been founded in Syria. These schools were largely concerned with the teachings of Aristotle, which were thence handed on into Persia, Arabia and other countries. The Arabs translated the Syriac versions of Greek writers into their own language, and their physicians and philosophers kept alive the knowledge of science during the dark ages when Greece and Rome had ceased to be the homes of learning, and while culture was still in its infancy in Germany, France and England. The Arabic translations of classical writings were eventually rendered into Latin, or even sometimes into Greek again, and in this guise found their way to western Europe.

Amongst other books, which suffered these successive metamorphoses, was the pseudo-Aristotelian botany of Nicolaus of Damascus, which has acquired importance in the annals of western science, because it formed the basis of the botanical work of Albertus Magnus.

Albert of Bollstadt (1193-1280), Bishop of Ratisbon, was a famous scholastic philosopher. He was esteemed one of the most learned men of his age, and was called “Albertus Magnus” during his life-time, the title being conferred on him by the unanimous consent of the schools. The “Angelic Doctor,” St Thomas Aquinas, became one of his pupils. According to legendary lore the name of Albertus would have been unknown in science, but for divine intervention, which miraculously affected his career. As a boy, tradition says that he was singularly lacking in intelligence, so much so that it was feared that he would be compelled to abandon the hope of entering monastic life, since he seemed incapable even of the limited acquirements necessary. However, one night, the Blessed Virgin, touched by his fervour and piety, appeared before him in glory, and asked whether he would rather excel in philosophy or in theology. Albertus without hesitation chose philosophy. The Virgin granted his desire, but, being inwardly wounded at his choice, she added that, because he had preferred profane to divine knowledge, he should sink back, before the end of his life, into his pristine state of stupidity. According to the legend, this came to pass. Three years before his death he was suddenly struck down, in the presence of his students, and never regained his mental powers.

The botanical work of Albertus forms only a small fraction of his writings, but it is with that part alone that we are here concerned. As already mentioned, his knowledge of botany was based upon a mediæval Latin work, which he reverenced as Aristotle’s, but which is now attributed to Nicolaus Damascenus, who was, however, a follower of Aristotle and Theophrastus. Although Albertus undoubtedly drew his botanical inspiration from this book, a large proportion of his writings on the subject were original.

The ideas of Albertus were in many ways curiously advanced, especially in the suggestions which he gives as to the classification of plants, and in his observations of detailed structure in certain flowers. We shall return to his writings in future chapters dealing with these subjects. It will suffice now to mention his remarkable instinct for morphology, in which he was probably unsurpassed during the next four hundred years. He points out, for instance, that, in the vine, a tendril sometimes occurs in place of a bunch of grapes, and from this he concludes that the tendril is to be interpreted as a bunch of grapes incompletely developed. He distinguishes also between thorns and prickles, and realises that the former are stem structures, and the latter merely surface organs.

Albertus seems to have had a fine scorn for that branch of the science now known as Systematic Botany. He considered that to catalogue all the species was too vast and detailed a task, and one altogether unsuited to the philosopher. However, in his Sixth Book he so far unbends as to give descriptions of a number of plants.

As regards abstract problems, the views of Albertus on plant life may be summed up as follows. The plant is a living being, and its life principle is the vegetable soul, whose function is limited to nourishment, growth and reproduction—feeling, desire, sleep, and sexuality, properly so called, being unknown in the plant world.

Albertus was troubled by many subtle problems connected with the souls of plants, such questions, for instance, as whether in the case of the material union of two individuals, such as the ivy and its supporting tree, their souls also united. Like Theophrastus, and other early writers, Albertus held the theory that species were mutable, and illustrated this view by pointing out that cultivated plants might run wild and become degenerate, while wild plants might be domesticated. Some of his ideas, however, on the possibility of changes from one species to another, were quite baseless. He stated, for instance, that, if a wood of oak or beech were razed to the ground, an actual transformation took place, aspens and poplars springing up in place of the previously existing trees.

The temperate tone of the remarks made by Albertus on the medical virtues of plants contrasts favourably with the puerilities of many later writers. Much of the criticism from which he has suffered at various times has been, in reality, directed against a book called ‘De virtutibus herbarum,’ the authorship of which was quite erroneously attributed to him. We shall refer to this work again in Chapter VIII.

After the time of Albertus, no great student of Aristotelian botany arose before Andrea Cesalpino, whose writings, which belong to the end of the sixteenth century, will be considered in a later chapter. The work of Cesalpino had great qualities, but, curiously enough, it had little influence on the science of his time. He may be regarded as perhaps the last important representative of Aristotelian botany.

3. MEDICINAL BOTANY.

With the Revival of Learning, the speculative botany of the ancients began to lose its hold upon thinking men. This may be attributed to the curious lack of vitality, and the absence of the power of active development, manifested in this aspect of the subject since its initiation at the hands of Aristotle. It had proved comparatively barren, because, though the minds which engaged in it were among the finest that have ever been concerned with the science, the basis of observed fact was inadequate in quality and quantity to sustain the philosophical superstructure built upon it. It might have been supposed _a priori_ that accurate observation of natural phenomena needed a less highly evolved type of mind than that required to cope with metaphysical considerations, and hence that, in the development of any science, the epoch of observation would have preceded the epoch of speculation. In actual fact, however, the reverse appears to have been the case. The power of scientific observation seems to have lagged many centuries behind the power of reasoning, and to have reached its maturity at least two thousand years later.

Aristotle and Theophrastus arrived by the subtlest mental processes at a certain attitude towards the universe, and at certain ideas concerning the nature of things. They attempted a direct advance in scientific thought by extending these conceptions to include the plant world. It was an heroic effort, but one which could not ultimately form a basis for continued progress, because, in its inception, preconceived ideas had come first, and the facts of Nature second. It seems to be almost a law of thought, that it is the indirect advances which in the end prove to be the most fertile. The progress of a science, like that of a sailing boat, more often proceeds by means of “tacking” than by following a direct course.

In the case of botany, the path which was destined to lead furthest in the end was the apparently unpromising one of medicine. Various plants from very early times had been used as healing agents, and it became necessary to study them in detail, simply in order to discriminate the kinds employed for different purposes. It was from this purely utilitarian beginning that systematic botany for the most part originated. As we shall show in later chapters, nearly all the herbalists whose work is discussed in the present volume were medical men. The necessity for some means of recognising accurately the individual species of medicinal plants led in time to a sounder and more exact knowledge of their morphology than had ever been acquired under the influence of thinkers such as Albertus Magnus, who regarded with some contempt the idea of becoming acquainted in detail with the countless forms of plant life.

The mass of observations relating to herbs and flowers, accumulated during a period of many centuries, largely for medicinal purposes, is to-day serving as the basis for far-reaching biological theories, which could never have arisen without such a foundation.

It is not systematic botany alone that we owe in the first instance to medicine. Nehemiah Grew (1641-1712), one of the founders of the science of plant anatomy, was led to embark upon this subject because his anatomical studies as a physician suggested to him that plants, like animals, probably possessed an internal structure worthy of investigation, since they were the work of the same Creator.

In Ancient Greece there was considerable traffic in medicinal plants. The herbalists[2] and druggists[3] who made a regular business of collecting, preparing and selling them, do not appear however to have been held in good repute. Lucian makes Hercules address Æsculapius as “a root-digger and a wandering quack[4].”

The herbalists seem to have attempted to keep their business select by fencing it about with all manner of superstitions, most of which have for their moral that herb-collecting is too dangerous an occupation for the uninitiated. Theophrastus draws attention to the absurdity of some of the root-diggers’ directions for gathering medicinal plants. For instance he quotes with ridicule the idea that the Peony should be gathered at night, since, if the fruit is collected in the daytime, and a wood-pecker happens to witness the act, the eyes of the herbalist are endangered. He also points out that it is folly to suppose that an offering of a honey-cake must be made when _Iris fœtidissima_ is rooted up, or to believe that if an eagle comes near when Hellebore is being collected, anyone who is engaged in the work is fated to die within the year.

The herbalists’ knowledge of plants must have been in the first place transmitted from generation to generation entirely by word of mouth, but as time went on, written records began to replace the oral tradition. The earliest extant European work dealing with medicinal plants is the famous Materia Medica of Dioscorides, which was accepted as an almost infallible authority as late as the Renaissance period.

Dioscorides Anazarbeus was a medical man who probably flourished in the first century of the Christian era, in the time of Nero and Vespasian. Tradition has, however, sometimes assigned to him the post of physician to Antony and Cleopatra. His native land was Asia Minor, but he appears to have travelled widely. In his Materia Medica he described about five hundred plants, with some attempt at an orderly scheme, though, naturally, the result is seldom successful when judged by our modern standards of classification. The actual descriptions of the plants are very slight, and it is only those with particularly salient characteristics which can be recognised with any ease. Careful research on the part of later writers has however led to the identification of a number of the plants to which he refers.

There is a famous manuscript of Dioscorides at Vienna, which is said to have been copied at the expense of Juliana Anicia, the daughter of the Emperor Flavius Anicius, about the end of the fifth, or the beginning of the sixth century. The character of the script settles the age within narrow limits. Juliana lived into the reign of Justinian, and was renowned for her ardent Christian faith, and for the churches which she built. The manuscript which bears her name is illustrated by a number of drawings, which are in some cases remarkably beautiful, and very naturalistic. A facsimile reproduction of this manuscript was published in 1906, and it is thus rendered accessible to students. Examples of the figures are shown on a reduced scale in Plates I, II and XV.

The botanists of the Renaissance devoted a great deal of time and energy to the consideration of the writings of Dioscorides. The chief of the many commentators who dealt with the subject were Matthiolus, Ruellius and Amatus Lusitanus, and a discussion of the botany of Dioscorides formed an integral part of almost every sixteenth-century herbal.

One of the contemporaries of Dioscorides, Gaius Plinius Secundus, commonly called the Elder Pliny, should perhaps be mentioned at this point, although he was not a physician, nor does he deserve the name of a philosopher. In the course of his ‘Natural History,’ which is an encyclopædic account of the knowledge of his time, he treats of the vegetable world. He refers to a far larger number of plants than Dioscorides, probably because the latter confined himself to those which were of importance from a medicinal point of view, whereas Pliny mentioned indiscriminately any plant to which he found a reference in any previous book. Pliny’s work was chiefly of the nature of a compilation, and indeed it would scarcely be reasonable to expect much original observation of nature from a man who was so devoted to books that it was recorded of him that he considered even a walk to be a waste of time!

The writings of the classical authors, especially Theophrastus and Dioscorides, dominated European botany completely until, in the sixteenth century, other influences began to make themselves felt. As we shall see in the following chapter, the earliest printed herbals adhered closely to the classical tradition.