142 EXPLOITATION OF PLANTS 
value, and Materia Medica may be said to be established 
with Dioscorides in the first century A.D. 
By this time physicians are distinct from herbalists, 
who, however, frequently took upon themselves curative 
work, and who, in any case, were much respected 
botanologoi. The botanologoi, alas, hedged round their 
trade with darkest superstition, and we read of the 
scream of the mandrake as it is drawn from the ground, 
the inoffensive rhizome being deceptively trimmed to 
resemble the human form before it is allowed to be seen 
of the people. 
It was the botanologoi who established the foundations 
for the science of botany, for the philosophical specula- 
tions of Aristotle and Plato proved less productive of 
knowledge than the observations, simple though they 
were, of the herbalists, who were ultimately driven 
through the exigencies of their trade to note and faith- 
fully describe the characteristics of their stock. 
The great herbals of the fifteenth and sixteenth cen- 
turies gave rise to the pharmacopeeias, on the one hand, 
and the floras on the other. 
Both the knowledge of plants and of their uses seems 
to have needed improvement, for Bacon writes, ‘‘ Medi- 
cine is a science which has been more professed than 
laboured, more laboured than advanced, the labour 
having been, in my judgment, rather in circle than in 
progression. I find much iteration, but small addition ”; 
and Turner, who has been called the Father of British 
Botany, dedicates his herbal to Elizabeth with the 
words, ‘‘ Such was the ignorance in simples that I could 
get no information on the subject, even from the 
Physicians.” 
