HERB - Begining Herbalism 101

[khkeeler]

Ghislaine Fontanneau wrote:
> 
> I've been lurking around, and now I'm ready to come out and show myself.
> I am Ghislaine Marie Fontanneau, lately of Ansteorra and recently of the
> Outlands.  I've been learning a bit about herbalism mundanely, and now
> I'm itching to find period applications for what I've learned.  Can
> ya'll recommend some good sources for herbalism pre-17th c.?   I want to
> learn the herbalism that my persona would have known.
> 
> Thank you in advance,
> Ghia

We made a pretty good list of authentic sources some time ago: did
anyone keep it?  and, do we have a summary of on-line references?

Ghia, here's my overview of the situation (others please fix my
overstatements!)

  Almost all of the period sources of Italian/French/German/English
tradition are retellings of the Dioscorides' _De Materia Medica_, Latin,
64 AD, out of print or available only in very expensive editions.  But
that is what most period medical people used, in some form.

   Culpeper's writings and Gerard's (both very end of Period) are
accessible--in print in various versions, some not too expensive.  They
represent additions from the views of earlier times, but are essentially
period sources.  

   Macer "On the virtues of herbs" has a 1970's translation that I
believe is still in print and available (D.P. O'Hanlon translation,
"Macer's on the virtues of herbs" Hemkunt Press, New Delhi, available
through various New Age sources).  This was a poem about 1200.  The
information is largely from Dioscorides.
    
   They used classical sources -- Galen, Pliny, Plato, Aristotle, Strabo
-- tho at least some of them were not widely available until late period
and so unknown although technically extant.

   A different tradition comes out of the Moslem healers: they maintain
some of the classical sources better than the western Europeans, and are
more experimental.  About 1000AD the mainline European tradition starts
to pick up Arab ideas --  the Tacunium Sanitatis is in print in at least
one form and represents the presentation of an Arab healing manual in
France and Italy.  (Somebody said a Georges Brazillier (that's the
publisher) edition is available through Amazon.com)

  Jewish medicine is quite separate, I think.

  Dioscorides is southern European (Mediterranean) and the northern
Europeans had different plants available but in Period, the science
didn't understand regional differences in plants as far as I can tell. 
There's almost certainly a separate tradition from the local people of
northern Europe but most of that was lost as Christianity took over. 
For AngloSaxon herbals: many years ago Cockayne made a translation of
everything he could find, which is not in print in any widely accessible
form. That is a very weird mix of rewritings of Dioscorides, nonsense
(charms in pseudoLatin), and maybe some uniquely northern herbalism.  

Culpeper in some editions has a section at the back on methods, the best
genuine how-to I know of.

Cheers
Agnes
kkeeler1 at unl.edu
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