3.2 Ancient herbals

Identifying plants used as food or as drugs can be complicated. While there is evidence from the ancient world that includes illustrations of plants, they are not always easily recognisable today. In Video 4, filmed in the Wellcome Library, Dr Laurence Totelin discusses with Dr Elma Bremmer some rare material, which derives from ancient Greek and Roman traditions, and discovers how far it is possible to identify plants from ancient and medieval illustrations.

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Transcript: Video 4 Ancient herbals

LAURENCE TOTELIN

What do you have for us today?

ELMA BRENNER

This is a manuscript produced probably towards the end of the thirteenth century. And it’s a herbal written in Latin.

LAURENCE TOTELIN

What’s a herbal?

ELMA BRENNER

A herbal is a book about the medicinal qualities of plants. And they were produced from the ancient period onwards.

LAURENCE TOTELIN

So you say it was used for medical purposes. Can you tell me a bit more about that?

ELMA BRENNER

Yes. It’s really a repository of information about which plants can be used for specific ailments or illnesses.

LAURENCE TOTELIN

Who would have made this?

ELMA BRENNER

We’re not sure who made it. We can only speculate. Given the date of the manuscript and the subject matter, I think it’s quite likely that it was produced in a monastery by monks or nuns.

LAURENCE TOTELIN

So I see there’s a snake there. So why did they represent a snake?

ELMA BRENNER

It’s really to do with one of the primary functions of this book, which was to provide crucial medical information. And one of the things medieval people were very concerned about was poisoning.

LAURENCE TOTELIN

Oh, wow.

ELMA BRENNER

Basically because when poisoning occurred, you needed a very swift remedy.

LAURENCE TOTELIN

Yes. So when I compare this snake, which is very vivid and moving, to this plant, I can see a contrast. This doesn’t look like anything I know, whereas the snake I can recognise.

ELMA BRENNER

Yeah, and that’s a really important point in relation to this manuscript is that a lot of people would say that they can’t easily recognise the plants. And I think that really reflects the process by which this and many other manuscript herbals were produced is that they were copied from earlier exemplars. And so there’s a process of the copying of an earlier copy of another copy. And so the original information about the plant gets a little bit lost along the way.

LAURENCE TOTELIN

You lose the naturalistic aspect.

ELMA BRENNER

Yes.

LAURENCE TOTELIN

So do you have images in this herbal of plants that I would recognise perhaps?

ELMA BRENNER

Well, there are one or two that are more recognisable than others. So we could have a look at one a little bit later in the volume.

LAURENCE TOTELIN

Beautiful. So which plant would you say I would recognise here?

ELMA BRENNER

Well, this plant is the peony plant. It may not look exactly like a peony today, but it is somewhat reminiscent, I would say. We know it’s the peony plant primarily because the Latin label above tells us that. But also, I think it is notable that this has brightly coloured flowers. So with this illustration we’ve got the roots protruding down below the bottom of the frame. Here they’ve used a black frame which really makes the red of the flowers stand out.

LAURENCE TOTELIN

It does. So, Elma, you’ve told me this is thirteenth century. So that’s medieval, and this MOOC [course] is about the ancient world. So why are you telling me things about the Middle Ages?

ELMA BRENNER

Well, medieval manuscripts are often a source of information about the ancient world. The other thing to say is that there are fewer survivals from the ancient world. But we do have one or two things here, one of which I’ve brought to show you.

As you can see, it’s kept in quite a special box.

LAURENCE TOTELIN

Yeah. It’s like unwrapping a present for Christmas.

ELMA BRENNER

Exactly. It really reflects how important and precious this is.

LAURENCE TOTELIN

That just looks like a book.

ELMA BRENNER

So far it looks like a book.

LAURENCE TOTELIN

I see it’s called Johnson Papyrus. What does that mean?

ELMA BRENNER

Well, this is a fragment of papyrus which was found in Egypt in the early 1900s by John de Johnson who was working with the Egypt Exploration Fund. It’s very old, and it dates from around the year 400 AD.

LAURENCE TOTELIN

[GASP]

ELMA BRENNER

And it’s extremely precious.

LAURENCE TOTELIN

Oh, wow. It’s really beautiful.

ELMA BRENNER

This is a fragment from a herbal. So it’s illustrations of plants with information in Greek written below them.

LAURENCE TOTELIN

So this is in Greek. And would you say it’s like a page of what you’ve just shown me, the medieval manuscript?

ELMA BRENNER

Exactly. It would have been from a book.

LAURENCE TOTELIN

And where’s the rest of the book?

ELMA BRENNER

Well, this is a fragment that survives. So we don’t know what else was in the rest of the book, how big it was, or anything like that. It’s one of those tantalising things that we wish we knew more.

LAURENCE TOTELIN

Very much so.

ELMA BRENNER

So this plant we know is the comfrey plant, following the label in Greek. We can be sure that this is the comfrey plant, even though it doesn’t really resemble comfrey at all.

LAURENCE TOTELIN

No, not really.

ELMA BRENNER

But we do know that comfrey had a number of medicinal uses, so that does make sense for it to feature in a herbal.

LAURENCE TOTELIN

And the medicinal uses, are they written here?

ELMA BRENNER

I believe so. I believe that the Greek is telling us something about the medical uses of the plant.

LAURENCE TOTELIN

How fascinating.

ELMA BRENNER

We don’t know if possibly it was originally a different colour and if the ink pigments have faded, or if it was actually intended to be this colour. But we can see that there are different shades of blue, so it is ...

LAURENCE TOTELIN

Yes, I can see the shading again.

ELMA BRENNER

Yeah. It is delicately drawn. And you’ve also got the roots to really clearly identify that this is a plant.

LAURENCE TOTELIN

What is that plant then?

ELMA BRENNER

Unfortunately, we don’t know what this specific plant was. Various experts have not been able to identify it, either from the visual appearance or from the Greek text.

LAURENCE TOTELIN

Yeah, it does look like any plant and every plant, doesn’t it?

ELMA BRENNER

It really does. And it’s frustrating because we have been able to identify the plant on the reverse. The illustration itself doesn’t give us enough information to really mark this out, and so it remains a mystery for us.

LAURENCE TOTELIN

That’s nice to have mystery sometimes.

ELMA BRENNER

Yeah, and it’s something that maybe someone in the future will be able to discover.

End transcript: Video 4 Ancient herbals

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Video 4 Ancient herbals

Notice how the knowledge of plants used in healing was transmitted from the Greeks and Romans into medieval and early modern Europe and the Arab world.