Dandelion from Elizabeth Blackwood's “A Curious Herbal containing five hundred cuts of the most useful plants, which are now used in the practice of physick, to which is added a short description of ye plants and their common uses in physick.” Published: 1737-39.
What’s an Herbal?
A herbal is a book of plants, describing their appearance, their properties & how they may be used for preparing ointments & medicines. The medical use of plants is recorded on fragments of papyrus & clay tablets from ancient Egypt, Samaria & China that date back 5,000 years but document traditions far older still. Over 700 herbal remedies were detailed in the Papyrus Ebers, an Egyptian text written in 1500 BC.
The earliest Herbals were books listing Simples, "a medicine composed or concocted of only one constituent, especially of one herb or plant." Herbals provide some of humans' earliest written descriptions & images of plants.
Herbals were among the 1st literature produced in Ancient Egypt, China, India, & Europe as the medical wisdom of the day accumulated by herbalists, apothecaries & physicians. Herbals were also among the first books to be printed in both China & Europe. Herbals were some of the most copied & prized books of ancient times. They often represented the pinnacle & summary of the medical knowledge of their day.
Many of the old herbals gathered & compiled information from even older sources & are truly "windows into the past," giving a fascinating information not only about the medicinal practices of ancient times, but also insights into the civilization's world-view.
Around 65 BC, a Greek physician called Dioscorides wrote a herbal that was translated into Latin & Arabic. Known as ‘De materia medica’, it became the most influential work on medicinal plants in both Christian & Islamic worlds until the late 17th century. An illustrated manuscript copy of the text made in Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul) survives from the sixth century.
In medieval Europe, prior to the advent of printing, herbals were typically written in Latin & copied by hand by monks. Thus passed around from scriptorium to scriptorium, herbals often acquired copious annotations either from the comments of other herbals or the working experiences of the users.
The first printed herbals date from the dawn of European printing in the 1480s. They provided valuable information for apothecaries, whose job it was to make the pills & potions prescribed by physicians. In the next century, landmark herbals were produced in England by William Turner, considered to be the father of British botany, & John Gerard, whose illustrations would inspire the floral fabric, wallpaper & tile designs of William Morris four centuries later.
In Western Europe herbals flourished for two centuries following the introduction of moveable type (c. 1470–1670)
Herbals were often illustrated to assist plant identification. Many of the 1st printed Herbals were copies of earlier handwritten manuscript texts which usually did not have plant images.
After the printing press, herbals usually contained the names & descriptions of plants, often with information on their medicinal, tonic, culinary, toxic, hallucinatory, aromatic, or magical powers, & the legends associated with them. A herbal might also classify the plants it describes, may give recipes for herbal extracts, tinctures, or potions, & sometimes include mineral & animal medicaments in addition to those obtained from plants.
