CHAPTER II
ON SAVAGES, DOCTORS, AND PLANTS
Savages knew Botany – First lady doctors and botanical excursions – True drugs and horrible ornaments – Hydrophobia cure – Cloves – Mustard – Ivy – Roses and Teeth – How to keep hair on – How to know if a patient will recover – Curious properties of a mushroom – The Scythian lamb – Quinine: history and use – Safflower – Romance of ipecacuanha – Wars of the spice trade – Cinnamon, dogwood, and indigo – Romance of pepper – Babylonian and Egyptian botanists – Chinese discoveries – Theophrastus – Medieval times – The first illustrated book – Numbers of plants known – Discoveries of painters and poets.
IF we look back to the time when all men and women were mere savages, living like the Esquimaux or the Australians of to-day, then it is certain that every person was much interested in plants. Nothing was so interesting as daily food, because no one was ever certain of even one good meal in the day.
So that in those early times there was a very sound, well-grounded knowledge of roots, bulbs, and fruits. They knew all that were good to eat, all that could possibly be eaten in time of famine and starvation, and also every poisonous and unwholesome plant.
Some savage genius must have discovered that certain plants were "good medicine"; that certain tree-barks helped to check fever, and that others were worth trying when people had successfully devoured more than they could comfortably digest. The life of a savage meant tremendous meals, followed by days of starvation; even now, when young children are fed on rice in India, a thread is tied round their waist, and, when this bursts, they are not allowed to eat any more.
Very probably some of these early physicians were lady doctors usually of a certain age. Men were too busy with their hunting and warfare to have time to try experiments with drugs, to make concoctions of herbs all more or less disquieting and to find out if these were of any use.
So that such medicine-men or witches gradually came to understand enough about poisons or fruits to make themselves respected and even feared. They would, no doubt, make botanical excursions in the forest, accompanied by their pupils, in order to point out the poisonous and useful drugs.
It is worth noting, in passing, that this habit of botanical professors going on excursions with medical students has persisted down to our own times, probably without any break in the continuity.
But it was soon found advisable to make this knowledge secret and difficult to get. They did not really know so very much, and a mysterious, solemn manner and a quantity of horrible and unusual objects placed about the hut4 would perhaps prevent some irate and impatient savage patient from throwing a spear at his wizard – or witch-doctor.
Shakespeare alludes to this in Macbeth. "Scale of Dragon; tooth of wolf; witches' mummy; maw and gulf of the ravin'd salt sea shark; root of hemlock digg'd i' the dark; … gall of goat and slips of yew"; and so on.
Most of their cures were faith-cures, and they were, no doubt, much more likely to be successful when the patient believed he was being treated with some dreadful stew of all sorts of wonderful and horrible materials.
This explains how it was that the knowledge of medicine became so mixed up with pure charlatanism and swindling that no man could tell which drugs were of real use and which were mere ornaments giving piquancy and flavour to the prescription. It is not possible to say that a snake's head, the brain of a toad, the gall of a crocodile, and the whiskers of a tiger, were all of them absolutely useless. Within the last few years it has been found that an antidote to snake-bite can be obtained from a decoction of part of the snake itself, and it has also been discovered that small quantities of virulent poisons are amongst our most valuable and powerful remedies.
Whether the savages and their successors the doctors of feudal times even down to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, suspected or believed that this was the case must remain a rather doubtful hypothesis, but there is no question "that the hair of the dog that bit him" theory of medicine was very prevalent.
The following was a cure for hydrophobia of a more elaborate nature: "I learned of a Friend who had tried it effectual to cure the Biting of a Mad Dog; take the Leaves and Roots of Cowslips, of the leaves of Box and Pennyroyal of each a like quantity; shred them small to put them into Hot Broth and let it be so taken Three Days Together and apply the herbs to the bitten place with Soap and Hog's suet melted together" (Parkinson).
This prescription is not so preposterous as it sounds. Box and Pennyroyal both contain essences which would be in all probability fatal to the germ of hydrophobia, and the soap and hog's suet would keep air from the wound.
Other prescriptions read like our modern patent medicines.
"Good Cloves comfort the Brain and the Virtue of Feeling, and help also against Indigestion and Ache of the Stomach" (Bartholomew).
"Senvey" (the old name of mustard) "healeth smiting of Serpents and overcometh venom of the Scorpions and abateth Toothache and cleanseth the Hair and letteth" (that is, prevents or tends to prevent) "the falling thereof. If it be drunk fasting, it makes the Intellect good."
Even in those days the people can scarcely have believed that drinking mustard improved the intellect. Many of the remedies and cures are obviously false, for example the following: -
"A man crowned with Ivy cannot get drunk."
"Powder of dry Roses comforteth wagging Teeth that be in point to fall."
The fact that the surgeon was also a barber, and also a "face-specialist," appears from the two following: —
"Leaves of Chestnut burnt to powder and tempered with Vinegar and laid to a man's Head plaisterwise maketh Hair increase and keepeth hair from falling."
Those whose hair turned grey could employ the following prescription: —
"Leaves of Mulberry sod in rainwater maketh black hair."
If a doctor was not quite sure of the endurance of a patient under these heroic remedies, he could easily find out if he would recover, for it was only necessary to try the following: —
"Celandine with the heart of a Mouldwarp" (that is mole, Scottice moudiewort) "laid under the Heade of one that is grievouslie Sicke, if he be in danger of Death, immediately he will cry out with a loud voice or sing; if not, he will weep."
In Lightfoot's Flora Scotica, there is an interesting account of the Fly Mushroom (Agaricus muscarius) which is not very rare in Britain, and which may be easily recognized by the bright red top or cap, with whitish scales scattered over it, and a sort of ring of loose white tissue round the stalk.
"It has an acrid and deleterious quality. The inhabitants of Kamschatka prepare a liquor from an infusion of this Agaric which taken in a small quantity exhilarates the spirits, but in a larger dose brings on a trembling of the nerves, intoxication, delirium and melancholy. Linnæus informs us that flies are killed or at least stupefied by an infusion of this fungus in milk and that the expressed juice of it anointed on bedsteads and other places effectually destroys" – what we may describe as certain lively and pertinacious insects with a great affection for man!
As a matter of fact the fungus is said to be a deadly poison.5
These quotations are enough to show how the real medical knowledge of those times was encrusted with all sorts of faith-curing devices, sheer falsehoods, and superstitions. The most learned men of the Middle Ages were almost invariably monks and hermits, for there was nothing in the world of those strenuous times to attract a studious, sensitive disposition. The spirit of their learning can be judged from the wearisome disquisitions and lengthy volumes written about the Barnacle Goose and Scythian Lamb.
In certain deserts along the Volga River in Russia, a peculiar fern may be found. It might be described as resembling a gigantic Polypody; the stem is about as thick as a lamb's body and grows horizontally on the ground like that of the common fern mentioned; thick furry scales cover the outside of its stem, which ends at the tip in an elongated point. The blackish-green leaf-stalks springing from the furry stem end in large divided green leaves.
It occurred to some medieval humorist to cut off the upper part of the leaf-stalks, and to make a sort of toy lamb out of the four leaf-stalk stumps and part of the woolly or furry stem.
This was palmed off as a wonderful curiosity of nature, as "a plant that became an animal," upon the ingenuous tourist of the period.
Such a subject was thoroughly congenial to the learned mind in the Middle Ages, and an enormous quantity of literature was produced in consequence. The general theory is given in the following lines: —
"Cradled in snow and fanned by Arctic air,
Shines, gentle Barometz, thy golden hair,
Rooted in earth each cloven hoof descends,
And round and round her flexile neck she bends,
Crops the grey coralmoss and hoary thyme,
Or laps with rosy tongue the melting rime,
Eyes with mute tenderness her distant dam,
Or seems to bleat, a vegetable lamb."
Such is the old idea of a well-known fern, Cibotium barometz.
Yet the original researches of some African "Obi" wizard or red Indian were not forgotten, and gradually came into practice.
It must be remembered that these savages were true scientific experimentalists, and made discoveries which have been of infinite service to mankind. We remember great men like Harvey, Lister, and Pasteur, but we never think of the Indian who discovered quinine.
The quinine trees, the yellow variety or Calisaya cinchona, grow in the mountains of north-eastern Bolivia and south-eastern Peru, in wild, inaccessible places at heights of 5000 to 6000 feet. The Indians probably experimented with almost every part of every wild tree before they discovered the wonderful properties of this particular species. The quinine in nature is probably intended to prevent some fungus or small insect from attacking the bark: when quinine is used in malaria, it kills the fever germ which attacks the blood corpuscles of the sick person, so that it is of the utmost importance in all tropical countries.
When the Jesuit fathers reached Peru and made friends and converts of the Indians, they discovered this remedy. Soon after the Countess de Chinchon, wife of the Viceroy of Peru, fell seriously ill of fever and was cured by the use of Jesuit's bark or quinine. It was introduced into Europe about 1638, but for a very long time the entire supply came from South America. The British Indian government were paying some £12,000 every year for South American quinine and, at the same time, the supply was running short, for the Indians were cutting down every tree.
At last, in 1859 (on the suggestion of Dr. Royle in 1839), the adventurous journeys of Clements Markham, Spruce, and Robert Cross resulted in the introduction of the Cinchona now flourishing in Madras, Bombay, and Ceylon. In 1897 British colonies produced about £43,415 worth of quinine, and the price is now only 7-1/2d. or 8d. a pound!
Such drugs as Safflower are of very ancient date. It was commonly employed in Egypt with other dyes and spices for embalming mummies. It is now used with carbonate of soda and citric acid to give a pink dye to silks and satins, and occasionally, in the form of rouge, to ladies' cheeks! How did the ancient Egyptians discover that this particular thistle-like plant (Carthamus tinctorius) had flowers from which a red dye could be extracted by a tedious process of soaking in water? The natural colour of the flowers is not red but yellow.
The history of other drugs reads like a romance. Ipecacuanha, for instance, was discovered by some unknown Indian who lived in the damp tropical forests of Brazil and New Granada. A worthy merchant in Paris obtained a little of the drug in the way of trade. Shortly afterwards he became very ill and was attended by a certain Dr. Helvetius, who was exceedingly attentive to him. The grateful merchant gave the kind-hearted physician some ipecacuanha. In the course of time the great King Louis XIV's son fell ill of dysentery, and Helvetius received 1000 louis d'or for his ipecacuanha.
A very interesting and romantic history might be written about the effect of drugs, dyes, and spices in developing trade. During the time when Britain was struggling to obtain a share of the foreign trade of Holland and France, such spices as Clove, Cinnamon, and Pepper were of the greatest importance. The Dutch, especially, adopted every possible method to keep the spice trade in their own hands. They cut down the clove, cinnamon, and other trees, in all the islands not directly under their control. They imposed the most barbarous penalties on any interloper. For instance, any one who sold a single stick of cinnamon in Ceylon was punished with death. When the English captured the island in 1796, all such restrictions were of course repealed. Nevertheless its cultivation remained a monopoly of the East India Company until 1832.
Logwood (Haematoxylon campechianum) is closely connected with the story of adventure and colonisation in the West Indies. Its use was at first forbidden by Queen Elizabeth as it did not yield fast colours; this was because the dyers of those times did not know of any mordant to fix them. Yet this is one of the few vegetable dyes which retain their position in the market in these days of aniline colours, and it is said to be a large constituent, with brandy, of cheap "port wine."
Indigo was known to the Romans, who imported it from India on camel-back by way of the Persian and Syrian desert. In the fifteenth century, when the Dutch began to introduce it in large quantities, it was found to interfere with the "woad"6 (Isatis tinctoria) which was then a very important cultivated plant in Europe. In Nuremberg, an oath was administered once a year to all the manufacturers and dyers, by which they bound themselves not to use the "devil's dye," as they called Indigo. Its more recent history shows a very different system. In Assam and other parts of British India, enormous sums of money have been invested in indigo plantations. It has been estimated that four million pounds was invested, and that a population of something like 700 Europeans and 850 workmen to the square mile in Behar, were entirely supported by indigo plantations.
Now all these planters are ruined and the population is dispersed, because German indigo manufactured from coal-tar is destroying the sale of the British-grown material. The plant has pretty blue flowers and belongs to the Leguminous order. The dye is obtained by steeping the leaves and young branches in water, and it is finally turned out in blue powder or cakes.
Perhaps the most interesting of all these drugs is Pepper. The Dutch, in the days of Queen Elizabeth, had a monopoly of the East Indian trade, and they tried to cut down or burn all spice trees except those in their own control. They could thus form a corner in pepper, and alter the price as they felt inclined. At one period they doubled the price, raising it from three shillings to six shillings per pound. This annoyed the London merchants so much that they met together and formed the "Society of Merchants and Adventurers trading to the East Indies." This was of course the original source of our great East Indian trade, and later on resulted in the Indian Empire.
At present, and for centuries past, the whole world is searched and explored for drugs and spices. Our medicinal rhubarb for instance, grows in China on the frontiers of Tibet; it is carried over the mountains of China to Kiaghta in Siberia, and from thence taken right across Russian Siberia to London and New York. It is closely allied to the common or garden rhubarb, which grows wild on the banks of the Volga.
It is only our duty to remember with gratitude all those long since departed botanists who have made our life so full of luxury and have supplied our doctors with all kinds of medicines.
The first doctors were of course just savage botanists, but as soon as men began to write down their experiences, we find botanical treatises. The first, and for a very long time the only, botanical books were intended to teach medical students the names and how to recognize useful flowers and drugs.
Medicinal herbs such as mandrake, garlic, and mint are found described on those clay cylinders which were used in Babylon instead of books, about 4000 B.C., that is some 6000 years ago! The Egyptians thought that "kindly, healing plants," such as opium, almonds, figs, castor-oil, dates, and olives, were derived from the "blood and tears of the gods"; that would be about 3000 B.C. It is not known how far back Chinese botany can be traced, but, by the twelfth century before Christ, some three hundred plants were known, including ginger, liquorice, rhubarb, and cinnamon.
Theophrastus, who flourished about 300 B.C., was a scientific botanist far ahead of his time. His notes about the mangroves in the Persian gulf are still of some importance. It is said that some two thousand botanical students attended his lectures.7 It is doubtful if any professor of botany has ever since that time had so large a number of pupils. Dioscorides, who lived about 64 B.C., wrote a book which was copied by the Pliny (78 A.D.), who perished in the eruption of Vesuvius. The botany of the Middle Ages seems to have been mainly that of Theophrastus and Dioscorides. In the tenth century we find an Arab, Ibn Sina, whose name has been commemorated in the name of a plant, Avicennia, publishing the first illustrated text-book, for he gave coloured diagrams to his pupils.
After this there was exceedingly little discovery until comparatively recent times.
But Grew in 1682 and Malpighi in 1700 began to work with the microscope, and with the work of Linnæus in 1731 modern botany was well started and ready to develop.8
It is interesting to compare the numbers of plants known at various periods, so as to see how greatly our knowledge has been increased of recent years. Theophrastus (300 B.C.) knew about 500 plants. Pliny (78 A.D.) knew 1000 species by name. Linnæus in 1731 raised the number to 10,000. Saccardo in 1892 gives the number of plants then known as follows: —
9. Saccardo, Atti d. Congresso, Bot. Intern. di Genova, 1892.
But, during the years that have elapsed since 1892, many new species have been described, so that we may estimate that at least 200,000 species are now known to mankind.
But it is in the inner meaning and general knowledge of the life of plants that modern botany has made the most extraordinary progress. It is true that we are still burdened with medieval terminology. There are such names as "galbulus," "amphisarca," and "inferior drupaceous pseudocarps," but these are probably disappearing.
The great ideas that plants are living beings, that every detail in their structure has a meaning in their life, and that all plants are more or less distant cousins descended from a common ancestor, have had extraordinary influence in overthrowing the unintelligent pedantry so prevalent until 1875.
Yet there were many, not always botanists, of much older date, who made great discoveries in the science. Leonardo da Vinci, the great painter, seems to have had quite a definite idea of the growth of trees, for he found out that the annual rings on a tree-stem are thin on the northern and thick on the southern side of the trunk. Dante10 seems to have also understood the effect of sunlight in ripening the vine and producing the growth of plants (Purgatorio, xxv. 77). Goethe seems to have been almost the first to understand how leaves can be changed in appearance when they are intended to act in a different way. Petals, stamens, as well as some tendrils and spines, are all modified leaves. There is also a passage in Virgil, or perhaps more distinctly in Cato, which is held to show that the ancients knew that the group of plants, Leguminosæ, in some way improved the soil. I have also tried to show that Shelley had a more or less distinct idea of the "warning" or conspicuous colours (reds, purples, spotted, and speckled) which are characteristic of many poisonous plants (see p. 238).
But if we begin with the unlettered savage, one can trace the very slow and gradual growth of the science of plant-life persisting all through the Dark Ages, the Middle Ages, and recent times, until about fifty or sixty years ago, when a sudden great development began, which gives us, we hope, the promise of still more wonderful discoveries.