THEOPHRASTUS 



as soon as men began to write down their experiences, we find 

 botanical treatises. The first, and for a very long time the 

 only, botanical books were intended to teach medical students 

 the names and how to recognize useful flowers and drugs. 



Medicinal herbs such as mandrake, garlic, and mint are 

 found described on those clay cylinders which were used in 

 Babylon instead of books, about 4000 b.c, that is some 6000 

 years ago ! The Egyptians thought that " kindly, healing 

 plants,*" such as opium, almonds, figs, castor-oil, dates, and 

 olives, were derived from the "blood and tears of the 

 gods''; that would be about 3000 b.c. It is not known how 

 far back Chinese botany can be traced, but, by the twelfth 

 century before Christ, some three hundred plants were known, 

 including ginger, liquorice, rhubarb, and cinnamon. 



Theophrastus, who flourished about 300 b.c., was a scien- 

 tific botanist far ahead of his time. His notes about the 

 mangroves in the Persian gulf are still of some importance. 

 It is said that some two thousand botanical students attended 

 his lectures.'^ It is doubtful if any professor of botany has 

 ever since that time had so large a number of pupils. 

 Dioscorides, who lived about 64 b.c, wrote a book which was 

 copied by the Pliny (78 a.d.), who perished in the eruption 

 of Vesuvius. The botany of the Middle Ages seems to have 

 been mainly that of Theophrastus and Dioscorides. In the 

 tenth century we find an Arab, Ibn Sina, whose name has 

 been commemorated in the name of a plant, Avicennia, pub- 

 lishing the first illustrated text-book, for he gave coloured 

 diagrams to his pupils. 



After this there was exceedingly little discovery until 

 comparatively recent times. 



But Grew in 1682 and Malpighi in 1700 began to work 

 ^ Lascelles, Pharm. Journ., 23 May, 1903. 

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