CHAPTER IX 



CONCLUSIONS 



GENERAL review of the subjects 

 discussed in the foregoing chapters 

 brings home to us several results of 

 some interest. Perhaps the most 

 obvious of these is the incalculable 

 debt which Botany owes to Medicine. 

 An overwhelming majority of the 

 herbalists were physicians, who were 

 led to the study of botany on account 

 of its connection with the arts of healing. As we have 

 already pointed out, medicine gave the original impulse, not 

 only to Systematic Botany, but also to the study of the 

 Anatomy of Plants. 



However, as the evolution of the herbal proceeded, we 

 have shown that botany rose from being a mere hand-maid 

 of medicine to a position of comparative independence. 

 This is well exemplified in the history of plant classification. 

 When the early medical botanists attempted any arrange- 

 ment of their material, it was on a purely utilitarian basis ; 

 the herbs were merely classified according to the qualities 

 which made them of value to man. But as the science 

 grew, the need of a more systematic classification began 

 to make itself felt, and in some of the works published in 

 the latter half of the period we are considering, there is a 

 distinct, if only partially successful, attempt to group the 

 plants according to the affinities which they present when 

 considered in themselves, and not in relation to man. The 

 ideal of a natural system in the Vegetable Kingdom, in 



