A further post in my series republishing The Folklore of Herbs (1946), a book by Katherine Oldmeadow, who was a significant figure in the British pagan revival.

CHAPTER IV

SOME OF THE OLD HERBALISTS

Adam might be called the first herbalist when he was put into a garden made by God.

The people of Biblical times and the Egyptian priests practised the art of healing with herbs.

Hygeia, the goddess of health, cured with medicines made from aromatic herbs and flowers. She was the daughter of Aesculapius, the god of healing, whose attributes were a staff, a bowl, a bunch of herbs, a pineapple, a dog and a serpent. The wisdom of the serpent must be possessed by a physician.

Five hundred years before Christ, Hippocrates, a Greek, was born. He is now called the “father of medicine.” He was a herbalist and a doctor, and his herbal medicines are still in use after nearly three thousand years. He probably knew little about anatomy, but he understood the importance of diet and exercise and was the first to think of checking the infection of plague by cleansing fire. The “Oath of Hippocrates” is still taken by doctors when they enter the medical profession, when they vow to do all in their power to help and relieve their patients.

Another well-known and often quoted herbalist is John Gerard, who was born in Cheshire in 1545. His famous Herbal was found on every sixteenth century bookshelf. As a young man in an agricultural county, famous for its meadows, deep lanes, hills and marshes, he would have a large field for his researches.

Three hundred years later another distinguished herbalist and naturalist, Darwin, found rare plants in the same district. In Gerard’s own Herbal he makes an interesting reference to the famous Cheshire cheese, and tells us that the secret of its excellence was the Ladies’ Bedstraw, which Cheshire housewives always put in the rennet when they were making the cheese.

Gerard was a surgeon by profession and Master of the Apothecaries’ Company. He might also be called a poet. He practised in London when he left Cheshire and combined medicine with gardening and the study of botany. He superintended Lord Burleigh’s beautiful garden for over twenty years. His own house was at Holborn, where he made a large Physic Garden.

Another herbalist, John Parkinson, lived just after Gerard’s time. He wrote a famous book on gardens, orchards and all manner of flowers and herbs. He was also an apothecary.

It is Parkinson who insists that although Adam was turned out of the Garden of Eden for his transgression, he did not lose his knowledge of the virtues of all the plants that grew there.

A later herbalist, William Coles, a botanist, wrote a delightful book in the seventeenth century called “The Art of Simpling.” It is in this book that he condemns the folly of astrology and bids his readers remember that plants were made before the stars. If every herb, he says, shows that there is a God, as verily it doth, the very beauty of plants being an argument that they are grown from an intellectual principle; what Lectures of Divinity might we receive from them if we would but attend diligently to the inward understanding of them.

Another sixteenth century herbalist, and perhaps the best known of all to the ordinary person, is Nicholas Culpeper, whose Herbal, with its complicated astrological directions for the picking of plants, was once used by every one and is still read for its quaintness. In his directions for mixing medicines Culpeper says: To such as study astrology (who are the only men I know that are fit to study physic; physic without astrology being like a lamp without oil), you are the men I exceedingly respect.

Culpeper had no respect for the College of Physicians, however, probably because he considered anything modern new-fangled, and he had a profound contempt for popish names for plants.

Medicine was a strange medley in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Barber-Surgeons, until forbidden by law, took away a great deal of practice from the physicians by setting up as “bleeders,” in days when blood-letting was looked upon as a cure for all ills. The sign of the Barber-Surgeon was the Barber’s Pole we all know so well.

The pole represented the staff held by the patient during the operation, the spiral ribbons painted round it the ligatures or bandages, and the gilt knob at the end of the pole the basin. Sometimes we see a real gilt basin on the poles in old signs.

Most medicines were herbal, administered under the direction of the stars; but other things, and rather queer ones, were used too; silver and gold, fragments of emeralds, sapphires and topaz. A patient in the middle ages had much to put up with, for when the surgeon had bled him he would probably have greedy leeches put on his head, a toad under his pillow, spiders’ webs on his cuts and live tenches on the soles of his feet.

In an apothecary’s shop of the times there used to be found many surgical instruments, sharp knives, saws, splints, spatules, syringes and several large pots for boiling and stewing the medicinal decoctions. A timing glass, too, for timing the mixings, unless the apothecary were of the old school and said a paternoster or a few Ave Marias during the process. But such ways were considered popish and superstitious after the Reformation.

Another thing usually found in the shop would be a piece of unicorn’s horn, which was supposed to be infallible as a test of poison in liquids. It would puzzle most people to know how the horn of this fabulous monster was procured, but it was probably taken from the narwhal.

A stag’s horn, too, was absolutely necessary when picking certain herbs.

The apothecaries were not the only ones who sold physic, and the witches not the only ones to sell charms; an immense trade in both was done by the travelling pedlars.

The pedlars travelled about to every country fair and wandered through every village, and very welcome they were in lonely districts where there were no shops and people had little news of the outside world.

They brought gossip, gay ribbons, scarves and shawls, medicines and charms to their customers and sang a little song about their wares: “I have pretty little girdles for pretty little maidens, fine gloves for ladies, wimples dyed a good saffron for dames, chased needles and thimbles for sempstresses, purses of silk, linen and leather. Here are shoe buckles and brass pins, and here’s a veil for a blessed nun. Come, dames and masters here! Plague water to keep the pest far from your children and pills to cure every ache known to man, and paints and powders for the cheeks of fair damsels – and who’ll buy paeony beads to keep away the evil eye? or comfits of fennel?”

Country folk bought most of their clothes, medicines and charms from these gypsy pedlars; and if they didn’t care to let the blacksmith pull their teeth out they waited until the fair came round, when the travelling dentist would appear with his forceps. Comfits or lozenges flavoured with herbs and spices were cheap and much in demand; the favourites were aniseed, saffron and cloves. At country fairs and Saturday markets in country districts the gypsy herbalist is still seen with his stall set out with cough lozenges, pills, ointments and lotions, made from the herbs he has gathered and prepared, and it is very likely that his recipes are the same as those used by the old peddling herbalists of the middle ages.

There is one herbalist, alive to-day, who, perhaps, knows more secrets about the old recipes than anyone, for he is the son of a mother known as “the Romany Medicine Woman.” She taught her son, Gypsy Petulengro, how to find and prepare herbs, barks and roots for healing ills. He has determined to keep these recipes secret no longer, but to allow them to benefit mankind, and he is making a large physic garden on the borders of the New Forest. Gypsy children are helping to plant in this garden healing herbs, found by them in the deep, solitary glades of the forest.