This poetry brings the wise king close to us in sensitivity and appreciation, for it is an experience now to go into a vinery in flower, when the first trusses of grapes are forming, for the unique and exquisite fragrance.

Ahab, that hard and ruthless king, had a single-minded wish to own Naboth’s vineyard, to turn it into a herb garden, and the resulting conflict of interests led first to cynical crime and then to tragedy foretold to Ahab, ironically, in his projected place of peace, the herb garden, where the prophet found him.

In Isaiah’s day the women wore, attached by chains, sweet balls which probably resembled the Elizabethan pomanders. The craftsmanship of a picture shimmering with reality and feeling comes to us also in the same book. ‘The Lord said “I will take my rest, and I will consider in my dwelling-place like a clear heat upon herbs, and like a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest.” And in the same book we have a practical illustration of the ancient virtues of plants, when Hezekiah was healed of a serious boil by Isaiah’s recommendation of a plaster of figs.

Hippocrates, whose name is immortalized in the doctors’ Hippocratic oath, is said to have been born in Cos, an island off Asia Minor, but was of Greek origin. He pursued his researches, living around 46o B.C., and wrote medical studies. He is once mentioned by Aristotle and often quoted for his opinions on the virtues of plants.

Herbal BeautyOver three hundred years before Christ, the Greek philosopher Aristotle, who was the son of a doctor, lived and wrote. His successor was Theophrastus of Athens, who wrote a treatise On the causes of Plants, which has been considered the most important contribution to botanical science in antiquity and, some authorities even add, up to the Middle Ages.

Jesus was anointed with the costly, fragrant ointment of spikenard, which may have been the nard of spike lavender, or the product of a plant allied to the valerian, both of which yielded scented ingredients. Earlier on, at his birth, the symbolic gifts of the Wise Men had been gold, and frankincense and myrrh. When he outspokenly condemned the Pharisees for their wrong sense of proportion, he mentioned the herbs they were careful to tithe—mint and rue (used as a fumigant), anise (or dill) and cumin; but, tragically, they omitted judgment and the love of God, the great essentials for keeping the Commandments.

In Roman days, the second wife of Caesar Augustus lived at the Villa Livia, named after herself. Here, for her pleasure, she had a garden-room decorated all round with an exquisite fresco of a scented garden, with orange trees, oleanders, roses, carnations and many other flowers.

Pliny the Elder (c. A.D. 23-79) was a Roman, a man of tremendously wide learning and interests, who was a contemporary of Jesus and who wrote a Natural History in thirty-two books, of which the twentieth to twenty-seventh volumes were on medical botany. They showed the range of his enquiring mind, but revealed him as being credulous on many points. In his day mandrake and belladonna roots were sometimes humanely given to patients to chew as anaesthetics before an operation.

Dioscorides was a Greek medical man who served in Nero’s army, and collected and collated much information on materia medica, which was popular in the Middle Ages. He described some 600 medicinal plants.

Galen, another familiar name whose opinions on medicinal plants are quoted, lived around A.D. 130-200. He was a Greek physician, born in Pergamos in Asia Minor, and had a considerable knowledge of Greek philosophy. He travelled widely, visiting the Alexandrian medical school. This school was famous for a long period, from around 306 B.C. until A.D. 642. Galen eventually settled in Rome. After Hippocrates, he is considered the most distinguished physician of antiquity.

As well as their uses for culinary purposes and for healing, and the delight and stimulation of their perfume, herbs played important parts in the old pagan rites, and were valued, in many cases, to ward off evil powers.

The wild Verbena officinalis or vervain (found wild on English chalk downs) with small mauve flowers, was considered to have numerous powers and virtues, being one of the Roman altar-plants, used symbolically by ambassadors in making pacts, worn against snakebites, and as a poultice against headaches, which latter use is still considered of value.

The Leech Book of Bald, in Anglo-Saxon, of A.D. 900, can (according to a medical authority) be regarded as the embryo of modern English medicine. It is written in the vernacular, by one Bald who may have been a friend of King Alfred, to whom prescriptions were sent by the Patriarch of Jerusalem, and to which Bald had access. It has been estimated that the Anglo- Saxons had names for, and used, five hundred plants, while on the Continent only some three hundred and eighty are mentioned in a German herbal printed in 1485.

The well-known suffix ‘wort’ means herb, and their gardens were `wyrtzerds’ or `herbyards’. For pleasure and use marigolds, sunflowers, and violets were grown, among many plants and flowers we know.

There are Saxon translations of a Latin manuscript dating very likely from the fifth century, Herbarium Apuleii Platonici, with illustrations which probably derived much from the herb drawings of ancient students described by Pliny. `They drew the likenesses of herbs and wrote under them their effects.’

In Anglo-Saxon days, herb lore was blended with myth and superstition; Christian rites entangled with those of earlier, pagan periods. In the Leech Book of Bald, illness and disease were linked with malicious elves, and apart from human ailments, cattle could be ‘elf-shot. This is of interest, laid for comparison alongside some of the New Testament hints that illness and disease lie in the power of the forces of evil,

Amongst many other plants, mandrake and periwinkle were said to have great power against demoniacal possession. The nine sacred herbs, cited in a heathen lay of great antiquity, as having power against venoms included chervil, fennel, `wergulu’ the nettle, crabapple, mugwort, watercress, `waybroad’ the plantain and `maythen’ the chamomile.

Thus, herbs were valued for their directly curative properties; for their protective effects against antagonistic forces; and, too, for their effects on men’s minds. Borage was said to be good against ‘melancholie; it maketh one merrie’. Later on, in Gerard’s Herbal, he quotes the old couplet

I Borage

 

Bring always Courage

which, remembering the cucumber scent of borage, reminds us of the present-day saying, ‘cool as a cucumber’. Other herbs associated with power over the moods were the old Scottish saying ‘Gather sweetbriar in June, for it promoteth cheerfulness’, and ‘To comfort the braine smel to camomill’.

These sayings were written down in the sixteenth century but were presumably oral traditions many centuries before. They raise interesting speculations, in the light of the modern rise of psychosomatic medicine, stressing the connection between unhealthy or depressed states of mind and body.

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Trace back: History of Herbs part 2