John M. Riddle, Goddesses, Elixirs, and Witches

John Riddle has published extensively on the history of plants and their uses in sexuality, contraception, abortion and fertility throughout the ages. This new volume is written very much in the same vein, but is aimed at a wider public than just historians. Asked, at a course on the history of medicinal plants in a medical school, whether these historical uses of plants actually worked, Riddle reports that: ‘Embarrassed, I replied: historians don't answer that question’, after which the students became disinterested (p. 3). This book is partly an answer to this lacuna, and is filled with current scientific explanations of how particular plants might have actually worked. The overarching aim of the work is to investigate how modern men and women have come to lose this knowledge of plants, and one discerns in Riddle's prose a certain Webberian disenchantment. Riddle concentrates on four plants: the pomegranate; the mandrake; absinthe, southernwood and mugwort, collectively grouped under Artemisia; and the chaste tree. All four plants are connected with ancient mythology, and with goddesses. Much emphasis is given to ancient historical sources, namely the Bible, and in particular Genesis, as well as Assyrian, Sumerian and Mesopotamian sources, Greek mythology and Greek medical writers, and Latin medical writers (amongst whom Riddle rather oddly inserts Pliny the Elder and Columnella). Riddle also forays into the Middle Ages, the early modern period, and the nineteenth century, although the accent remains on the Ancient world. The first two chapters concentrate on the pomegranate and the huluppu tree, linking the Sumerian fertility goddess Inanna to Eve and the Biblical story of the Creation. Riddle establishes convincingly that the original apple was in fact a pomegranate, well known for its contraceptive powers. By eating the fruit, Eve—and by extension Adam—gained knowledge not only of reproduction but also of contraception. The mandrake is the object of Chapter three, a well-known anaesthetic but also an aid to reproduction, giving rise to two traditional ways of envisioning the plant—as evil or good. The Assyrians seem to have had knowledge of the mandrake as a fertility agent and it is mentioned in Genesis, but the Egyptians or the Ancient Greeks never alluded to it. Why that would be the case is one of the intriguing questions of the chapter, and although Riddle asks it, he does not answer it satisfactorily. Although he cannot be accused of over-seriousness in his work, the three references to Harry Potter's mandrakes are perhaps a little out-of-place

Ancient Greece · Ancient history · Ancient literature · Art · Human sexuality · Literature · Middle Ages · Mythology · Prologue · Sociology · Sumerian · Diverse Historical and Scientific Studies · History of Science and Medicine · Classics · Gender Studies · History