8 A GARDEN OF HERBS 



Of the earlier herb gardens we have, alas, very little 

 definite knowledge. We know from Pliny that the Druids 

 used large numbers of medicinal herbs, and we gather from 

 his account that the knowledge of herbal medicine was 

 confined to the priesthood. He tells us, moreover, that 

 they gathered herbs with such striking ceremonies that it 

 might seem as if the British had taught them to the Persians, 

 whose country was supposed to be the home of superstitious 

 medicine. All the written lore on herbs previous to Alfred's 

 reign has been lost, and any books there were, were probably 

 destroyed during the terrible Danish invasion, when so many 

 valuable monastic libraries were burnt. That these books 

 on herbs existed is almost certain, for we know that in the 

 eighth century, Boniface, " the Apostle of the Saxons," 

 received letters from various persons in England asking him 

 for books on simples. The oldest herbal in England is 

 an MS. in the British Museum which was written under the 

 direction of one, Bald, who, if he was not a personal friend 

 of King Alfred's, had at any rate access to the king's corre- 

 spondence, for he gives certain prescriptions sent by Helias, 

 Patriarch of Jerusalem, to the king. In a lecture delivered 

 before the Royal College of Physicians in 1903, Doctor 

 J. F. Payne commented on the remarkable fact that this 

 and several other Saxon manuscripts on herbs were written 

 in the vernacular, and thus they were unique in Europe at 

 that time. ''In no other European country was there at 

 that time any scientific literature written in the vernacular. 

 The Saxons had a much wider knowledge of herbs than the 

 doctors of Salerno, the oldest school of medicine in Europe 

 and also the oldest European university. No treatise of 

 the school of Salerno contemporaneous with the Leach book 

 of Bald is known, so that the Anglo-Saxons had the credit 

 of priority. . . . The Leach book of Bald was the first 

 medical treatise written in Western Europe which can be 

 said to belong to modern history, that is produced after the 

 decadence and decline of the classical medicine. ... In fact 

 it is the earliest medical treatise produced by any of the 

 modern nations of Europe." This old manuscript to which 



