HORTICULTURE IN RELATION TO MEDICINE. 



53 



propagator of tulips, for twenty years bringing forth every season new 

 plants of sundry colours not before seen. " All which to describe were to 

 roll Sisyphus' stone or to number the sands." 



An improved and enlarged edition of Gerarde's " Herbal " was brought 

 out in 1638 by Dr. Thomas Johnson, an apothecary, who received the degree 

 of M.D. in 1643. He had a physic garden at Snow Hill. Another 

 apothecary, John Parkinson, who was created by Charles I. " Botanicus 

 regius primarius," was an enthusiastic horticulturist, and published in 

 1629 a work on garden plants, which he entitled, in the form of a pun 

 upon his own surname, " Paradisi [i.e. Park] in sole Paradisus terrestris." 

 His botanic garden w T as in Long Acre. This work contains very little 

 concerning medicinal plants, but did much to encourage the cultivation of 

 new and rare garden plants. Robert Morrison, who held a medical degree 

 from Angiers (1648) and Oxford (1649), published a valuable work in two 

 folio volumes devoted more to general than to medical botany, entitled 

 "Plantarum Historia Oxoniensis." In 1696 Dr. Leonard Plukenet, who 

 was Queen's Botanist to Mary, published his " Almagestum." He had a 

 botanic garden at Old Palace Yard, Westminster, and was Supervisor of 

 Hampton Court Gardens. Another celebrated Herbal was published in 

 1710, entitled " Botanologia," by William Salmon, M.D. and Professor of 

 Medicine. 



James Sherard, apothecary and physician, had a garden at Eltham, 

 which was considered to be one of the richest in England at the time. 

 He employed John James Dillenius to write an account of it, entitled 

 " Hortus Elthamensis," in 1732. Dillenius, who possessed the medical 

 degree of Giessen and Oxford, afterwards became the first Sherardian 

 professor of botany at Oxford, and edited Ray's " Synopsis Plantarum." 



Dr. John Hill, who was the first Superintendent of the Royal Gardens 

 at Kew, published a Herbal in 1756 and the "Hortus Kewensis " in 1768. 

 He had a private botanic garden at Bayswater. 



About this time a great impetus was given to the scientific study of 

 systematic botany and horticulture by the purchase of the collections of 

 Linnaeus by Sir J. E. Smith in 1784, and by the foundation by him of the 

 Linnean Society, and by his publication of the " Flora Britannica " between 

 1794-1804. He possessed the M.D. degree of Leyden University. Dr. 

 Robert John Thornton, who succeeded Sir J. E. Smith as Lecturer on 

 Botany at Guy's Hospital, published a Family Herbal in 1810. 



After this date the works on medicinal plants were confined more 

 strictly to those official in the Pharmacopoeia, and many of the herbs used 

 only in domestic practice were omitted. The earliest one of these, entitled 

 "Medical Botany," was published in 1790-1799 by William Wocdville, 

 who was physician to the Small-pox Hospital at King's Cross, where he 

 had a botanic garden. 



The " Medical Botany " of Stephenson and Churchill, published in 1831, 

 was an improvement on that of Woodville. John Stephenson held the 

 degree of M.D. of Edinburgh University. 



The most recent work in this country on medicinal plants was pub- 

 lished by Robert Bentley, M.R.C.S., and Henry Trimen, M.B., in 1878, 

 and included the medicinal plants official in the Pharmacopoeia of Great 

 Britain and the United States up to that date. 



