HERB - Re: Culpepper and beginning period books

[M Wolfe]

Actually it is a very good question, although it is not one that can have
an entirely straight, simple answer.  Gerard's first edition is 1598.  Some
A&S things and some SCA folks stick hard and fast to a 1600 cutoff date.
This is because some documents describing the SCA list 1600 as a cutoff,
some later stuff lists 1650.  

For the hard and fast 1600 folks, all of Culpeper's works fall out of
period.  However, because of the way that Thomas Johnson edited Gerard's
herbal for the second edition it is still possible to use that as a
"period" source.  However, it requires a bit of careful reading, and it
requires educating the judges.

Johnson used little single or double dagger symbols in the text to indicate
areas in which he made substantive changes, or added an entire section.  He
is also pretty clear about his methods in his introduction.  Thus you will
discover that there are several additions such as Cacao beans which do not
appear in the first edition, but there are entire passages which remain in
tact.

Most An Tir stuff tends to run to the 1650 date.  However at the last
Kingdom A&S I was using two sources in a chocolate entry.  One was 1652,
the other was 1685.  I could justify them because they were both English
translations of a Spanish work from 1631.  The reason for working from both
was to attempt to sort out what was in the Spanish work, and sort out a
couple of probable errors in translation in the 1652 work, with our
recourse to the Spanish.

At 09:09 AM 8/29/99 , you wrote:
>I have perhaps a very stupid question - but are not Culpepper and Gerard
>primary sources or am I mistaken?  The last time I submitted something to
>A&S they told me that neither were "period".  Is this correct?
>
>Moira
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Rauthulfr Meistari inn Orthstori  (OL, MC, P-eX, Et Cetera)  An Tir A&S
Champion
or, non- SCA: Michael Wolfe M. A. I. S. AB-
*Practice Random Acts of Chocolate.....

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