LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE 47 



class of men who followed as a regular business the gathering, pre- 

 paring, and selling of roots and herbs that were of repute in medi- 

 cine. It was of course naturally inferred and easily ascertained that 

 whatever properties perennial herbs possess are concentrated in 

 their subterranean parts during the season of the plants' rest in 

 autumn and winter; so that what were called the roots of plants 

 formed the bulk of the materia medica. All this the very name 

 of rhizotomi, root-gatherers, sufficiently declares. 



The botanists of antiquity, that is to say, they who inves- 

 tigated the plant world as philosophers rather than as econo- 

 mists, inform us that the rhizotomi were mostly unlettered 

 men, usually more superstitious than scientific, observing an ex- 

 tensive ritual in the digging as well as in the a^ter prepara- 

 tion of their simples; evidently mixing medicine and magic 

 after a manner almost universal in the early history of the healing 

 art; as often attributing to their preparations magic virtues as 

 medicinal. Concerning some of the ceremonies of the rhizotomi we 

 have information.' There were various prayers and incantations 

 to be said or sung. Some kinds of roots were to be dug in the day- 

 time, some others by night only; the powerful plant hellebore, 

 only after the observance of various precautions. The point of a 

 sharp sword must be drawn three times around certain roots to 

 make them more efficacious. The gatherer of some sorts must be 

 careful to face the east while digging. In the case of others he 

 must stand on the windward side of the plant. Some require to be 

 collected by one newly anointed with oil. As preparatory to the 

 culling of other kinds, the rhizotomos must eat garlic and drink 

 wine. As modern and as learned an author as Kurt Sprengel 

 relegates all those observances without discrimination to the 

 category of foolish superstitions ^ ; this, as it seems to me, incon- 

 siderately. There are plants enough the exhalations of which 

 are so deleterious that persons of delicate organism may be un- 

 comfortably affected by the mere passing close to them on the 

 leeward side, of a breezy day. Any discreet American botanist 

 not immune against Toxicodendron vulgare, if tempted to gather 

 specimens of it, would use among other precautions that of holding 

 himself to the windward of the plant if there happened to be a 

 breath of air stirring. His act would be adjudged sane and rea- 

 sonable. Another such precaution might be that of using gloves 

 while handling any parts of the plant ; whereas an old-time oriental, 



• Theophrastus, Hist., Book ix, ch. 9. 



* Sprengel, Hist. Rei Herb., vol. i, p. 63. 



