ous Herbes. 9. Thistles and Thorny Plants. 10. Fearnes 

 and Capillary Herbes. 11. Pulses. 12. Cornes. 13. Grasses, 

 Rushes and Reedes. 14. Marsh, Water and Sea Plants, 

 and Mosses, and Mushromes. 15. The Unordered Tribe. 

 16. Trees and Shrubbes. 17. Strange and Outlandish Plants. 

 This classification bears little relationship to modern ones 

 and its value can be judged by Parkinson's naive comment 

 on class 15: "In this Tribe as in a gathering Campe I mvist 

 take up all those straglers, that have either lost their rankes, 

 or were not placed in some of the foregoing orders, that so I 

 may preserve them from loose, and apply them to some con- 

 venient service for the worke." 



The scope of the work has been admirably summed up 

 by J. Reynolds Green in his A History of Botany in the 

 United Kingdom from the Earliest Times to the End 

 OF the 19th Century (London, 1914): "The descriptions 

 in many instances were new, and great care was exercised 

 to secure accuracy in indicating localities. In the enumera- 

 tion of the synonyms the author incorporated the valuable 

 work of K. Bauhin's Pinax, and in many cases verified them 

 by reference to the original authors. In dealing with the 

 medicinal peculiarities of the plants he quoted largely from 

 the more exclusively galenical works of the time, the writ- 

 ings of De L'Ecluse, Orta, a Costa, Monardes, and others. 

 He discussed also the opinions of Greek, Roman, and Ara- 

 bian physicians, and took the greatest care to render his 

 account as complete as the general state of knowledge would 

 permit." 



Nevertheless the emphasis of the work remained med- 

 ical, as it had to, for the herbal served a definite and very 

 useful function. It was not primarily concerned with plants 

 as such, but with their use in curing man's illnesses. To 

 understand its use we must know something of its under- 

 lying medical philosophy. 



The pathogenic theories of that time were derived from 

 the well-known doctrine of humors. It was asserted that 

 the four elements, water, air, earth, and fire, or their asso- 

 ciated qualities, wetness, dryness, cold, and heat, corre- 

 sponded in the human body to the four humors, phlegm. 



g 

 s 



Perhaps the most curious "botanical" listed in the Theatrum is 

 mummy, being, as Parkinson tells us, "of much and excellent use 

 in all Countries of Europe." Among other things it is prescribed as 

 a "cordiall for the heart and preventeth the danger of poyson." 



bile, atrabile, and blood, and hence to the four tempera- 

 ments, phlegmatic, choleric, melancholic, and sanguine. 

 Subscribers to this belief held that good health depended 

 on the harmony of these humors and that disease resulted 

 from a dishannony. As a result the remedies were largely 

 allopathic and designed to dispel humoral disturbances. 

 George H. M. Lawrence, in his excellent essay Herbals: 

 Their History and Significance, tells us how this was 

 accomplished : "The treatment to restore harmony when 

 disease was present followed in general one or more of three 

 steps or stages: the early stage, before diagnosis could ap- 

 proach certainty, when it was the practice to prescribe herbs 

 and other medications that would be bland body builders, 

 tonics, and stimulants; the critical and debilitating stage, 

 when one would prescribe herbs for specific ills but that 

 would not be unduly drastic on ingestion (using such prepa- 

 rations as distillates and decoctions in all manner of com- 

 bination with nonpurgative ingredients) ; and finally, at the 

 crisis, to induce the discharge of disharmonious humors 

 through every available orifice and pore, doing so by the 

 administration — often in rapid succession — of puratives, 

 diuretics, cathartics, and emetics, and often accompanied 

 by such more rigorous practices as bloodletting, enemas, or 

 cupping." We may shudder at this treatment, secure in 

 the knowledge that the efTects of most of the herbs were at 

 best negligible; but we should remember that this was part 

 of the medical "science" of Parkinson's time and of earlier 

 centuries. Still, as one writer observed, "How fortunate 

 that, by the side of scammony, rhubarb, cassia and senna, 

 the poppy was also cultivated!" 



Herbals serve a somewhat different function today. They 

 are the source materials for the study of the history of bot- 

 any, medicine, and pharmacology, and of the history, con- 

 ditions, and customs of the period in which they were 

 written. The latter is particularly true of the Theatrum 

 Botanicum. It is the curious out-of-the-way pieces of in- 

 formation that interest us most, and which, together with 

 the "quaintness" of his English, help to give us something 

 of the flavor of Parkinson's time. 



It is surprising how much legend and folklore survive in 

 Parkinson's work. He extols the virtues of the unicorn's 

 horn and describes the animal as living "farre remote from 

 these parts, and in huge vast Wildernesses among other 

 most fierce and wilde beasts." He discusses the "vegetable 

 lamb," one of the most curious myths of the Middle Ages, 

 and one gathers that he believed the travellers' tales about 

 it: "This strange living plant as it is reported by divers good 

 authors . . . groweth among the Tartares about Samarcanda 

 and the parts thereabouts, rising from a seede somewhat 

 bigger and rounder than a Melon seede, with a stalke about 

 five palmes high, without any leafe thereon, but onely bear- 

 ing a certaine fruit on the toppe, in forme resembling a small 

 lambe, whose coate or rinde is woolly like unto a Lambes 

 skinne, the pulpe or meate underneath which is like the 

 flesh of a Crevise or Lobster, having as it is sayd blood also 

 in it; it hath the forme of an head, hanging downe, and feed- 

 ing on the grasse round about it, untill it hath consumed it 



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