Prospecting for Drugs in Ancient and Medieval European Texts

Reviewed by: Prospecting for Drugs in Ancient and Medieval European Texts: A Scientific Approach Karen Reeds Bart K. Holland, ed. Prospecting for Drugs in Ancient and Medieval European Texts: A Scientific Approach. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1996. 105 pp. $65.00; £39.00. For millennia, healers and their patients have been testing the medicinal properties of plants and passing along the results from one generation to the next. Western pharmaceutical companies are now rushing to exploit the ethnobotanical lore of traditional African, Asian, and Native American cultures—but they are ignoring a rich lode of potentially valuable knowledge that lies much closer to hand. This volume argues that a systematic examination of the remedies in the herbals of ancient, medieval, and Renaissance Europe is warranted, and explains how to go about it. Although it is easier to prospect for drugs in rare book rooms than in jungles, understanding an Anglo-Saxon leechbook or a sixteenth-century theriac treatise requires just as much sensitivity to language, culture, and context as learning a shaman’s secrets, as Ann Van Arsdall emphasizes in her deft survey of medical and pharmacological theory, practice, and genres. Elizabeth R. Macgill drives home the difficulties and possible rewards of the close analysis of primary sources in her examination of a wonderful manuscript collection of “Sovereigne Medicines” recorded by John Feckenham circa 1570. Upholding the Benedictine tradition of care of the sick even in the face of religious persecution by Henry VIII, this abbot of Westminster carefully wrote out all he knew “by good proofe and longe experience” (p. 43), including new remedies using New World plants (a salve from “Tabaco” leaves [p. 54], a salad of “potatas” [p. 42]). John M. Riddle underpins the book’s central argument by providing concrete examples of plants whose ancient claims to efficacy have been validated by modern science: raw garlic to combat atherosclerosis; radish juice to kill the lice that transmit typhus; autumn crocus to relieve the pain of gout; squirting cucumber and periwinkle to shrink tumors; and nettle soup to counter prostate gland enlargement, hinder menstruation, and promote hair growth. Riddle’s cautionary notes are as valuable as his persuasive examples: the ancient texts deal with symptoms that can have many different causes, and medicinally active plants can produce many different effects. These points are underscored by Thurman Hunt’s outline of the process required to bring any medicinal plant into commercial pharmaceutical production, and by Bart K. Holland’s succinct warnings about conducting clinical trials. The most difficult step often comes in deciding which plant corresponds to the one recommended in an early herbal (Feckenham’s “potatas” are, I would venture, more likely to be sweet potatoes than white potatoes). James L. Reveal’s essay is an absolutely indispensable guide to identifying plants in the pre-Linnaean botanical literature. This is an original and extremely interesting book, and everyone with an interest in the historical and modern uses of medicinal plants will want to read it. Its goal of prodding the scientific investigation of the Western heritage of medicinal botany is more likely to be achieved, however, if the book is reissued [End Page 525] with a consistent form of citation, a unified bibliography, and, above all, an index that includes every author, plant, and active ingredient named in the text. Karen Reeds Columbia University and National Coalition of Independent Scholars Copyright © 1997 The Johns Hopkins University Press

Apothecary · Archaeology · Art history · Context (archaeology) · The Renaissance · Classics · Ethnobotanical and Medicinal Plants Studies · History