HERB - Re: Culpepper and beginning period books

[Kathleen Keeler]

Christine A Seelye-King wrote:

>  There is much value in being able to cross-check
> references.  Perhaps one compendium of every valuable source would make
> telling beginners where to start easier, but I always advise looking in
> several sources, and making sure you have at least 2-3 that agree on
> something before trying an unknown out.   This is valuable for accuracy,
> true, but it is also useful to be able to get different uses for
> different contexts.  As you say, there is no one perfect source, largely
> because, in my opinion, there is no one perfect situation.  People are
> different, situations vary, diet, habitat, environment, stress, genetics,
> and phases of the moon can all have bearing on a condition.  I usually
> tell people to get at least a couple of books, and find something that
> makes sense to them, and is a remedy that they will actually try and
> carry through on.
> <snip>        Christianna

    But Christianna, you are talking about modern treatments.  I think the Period
version is that there is only a single truth, and that a reliable herbal will give
it to you.  The question was to identify an available primary source that reflects
the ideas of the time, which Culpeper may not.
   I would therefore recommend DP O'Hanlon's translation of "Macer's Virtues of
Herbs". Macer wrote in rhymed Latin about 1200, it is pretty straight from
Dioscorides.  O'Hanlon's translation is a little New Age,  oh well.  It was never
in the trade market, it was published by Hemkunt Press, Delhi India and distributed
through the New Age/Health Food circuit, but that means it didn't go out of print
in the usual fashion. Let me trace back to see if it can still be gotten--its short
and inexpensive and readable.  Just not accessible, maybe we can change that.
   The middle period stuff is, as Jasmine says, repetitious, and it should be,
because they are all of them generally repeating Dioscorides.  The problem is that
Dioscorides himself is not readily available and the translation in my U's library
is very difficult indeed.  But if you have Dioscorides you have the information in
western herbals until late Period.
   What do we know about what was available to people in the Middle Ages?  The
history of medicine and of geography features new translations of classical sources
after about 1250.  Earlier they had a very limited collection of what the Romans
and Greeks knew. Their Aristotle was only one book and not the one we're most
likely to read today (check me on that).  And of course the stuff the Arabs
preserved wasn't accessible then either.
   If you are doing generic Medieval herbalism or late Period, that won't bother
you, but I'm trying to recreate 1190s, Angevin Empire, and what we in 1192 don't
know is as important as what we do.
   Jadwiga, one nice thing about Culpeper is the section on methods in some
editions.  Its the closest to Period source of how to do a decoction or preserve
herbs in sugar that I know.  Do you know a better one?

Agnes
kkeeler1 at unl.edu

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