The Herbal in Antiquity and its Transmission to later Ages

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Abstract
§ 1.Introduction.—AHerbalis a collection of descriptions of plants put together for medical purposes. Most herbal remedies are quite devoid of any rational basis. It may be taken for granted that the writer of a herbal is unable to treat evidence on a scientific basis. He makes a ‘direct attack’ on disease, without any ‘nonsense about theories.’ The herbal is thus to be distinguished from the scientific botanical treatise by the fact that its aims are exclusively ‘practical’—a vague and foolish word with which, from the days of Plato to our own, men have sought to conceal from themselves and from others their destitution of anything in the nature of general ideas.A herbal is, moreover, to be distinguished from most other medical works not only in method but also in form. Its arrangement is under remedies rather than under diseases or conditions to be treated. A herbal is, in fact, primarily a descriptive drug-list or, as we now call it, apharmacopoeia. Pharmacopoeias include a number of substances that cannot be classed as of vegetable origin. Nevertheless, in many ancient as in most modern medical systems, there has been a tendency for remedies to be of a herbal nature. The pharmacopoeias of the Greco-Roman world thus tended to approximate to the nature of herbals.

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