Stories
- Article
Sacred cows and nutritional purity in India
Apoorva Sripathi explores the complex reasons behind India’s recent boom in all things dairy – beginning with a 1970s Western food-aid programme.
- Article
Hunting lost plants in botanical collections
A bark specimen at Kew recalls the story of a South American man who harvested the most potent source of the only effective malaria treatment available in the late 1800s. Killed for his work and forgotten by history, Manuel Mamani was a victim of the colonial juggernaut.
- Book extract
Ayurveda: Knowledge for long life
The story of medicine in India is rich and complex. Aarathi Prasad investigates how it came to be this way.
- Article
The healing power of the physic garden
Having experienced the healing power of plants and gardens, Iona Glen goes in search of present-day “physic gardens” and their origins in history.
Catalogue
- Archives and manuscripts
Unsigned paper arguing for lower duties on medicinal plants imported from the East to Great Britain
Date: Late 18th century - early 19th centuryReference: MS.7226/1Part of: Medicinal Plants: miscellany- Books
Bheṣaja - gaṇa / [Priya Vrat Sharma].
Sharma, P. V. (Priya Vrat), 1920-Date: 1985- Books
The Indian pharmaceutical codex. Vol. I - Indigenous drugs / by B. Mukerji.
Mukerji, B. (Bishnu), 1903-Date: 1953- Pictures
China rose or Shoe flower (Hibiscus rosa-sinensis L.): two flowering stems and separate fruits, flower and seeds - both whole and sectioned. Coloured line engraving by G. Appelman after M. Splinter.
Splinter, Marcelis, 1634-Date: [1686]Reference: 16212i- Pictures
- Online
Left and right - Chasalia ophioxyloides (Wall.) Craib.: branch with flowers and fruit and separate flowers and fruit. Coloured line engraving.
Date: [1685]Reference: 16048i