Botany.

Date:
1826
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Botany. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    27. The father of medicine, Hippocrates, added to the observations of iEsculapius a great many of his own, and first published several works on medicine. In his writings, the diseased and healthy state of man are fully treated of, and in speaking of the methods of cure, he has men¬ tioned about 234 plants. But these are only names. Hippocrates was born about 459 years before Christ, at the Island of Cos. He lived to a very old age, though on that point authors differ, some saying he lived to be 89 years old, some 90, others 104, and a few indeed 109. The plants he mentions can scarcely be guessed at; for though great natural philosophers and linguists have attempted, long ago, to fix them properly, notwithstanding all their endeavours they still remain very doubtful. 28. Among the ancients, Thales, the Milesian, holds the earliest station as a philosopher. He perceived in the whole range of natural bodies nothing but mind, daemons, and a divine nature. As the ocean was the parent of his gods and goddesses, so was water the primi¬ tive origin of all created things. Aristotle con¬ ceives that the humid state of all nutriments, and the aqueous nature of all seeds in the beginning, gives a plausibility to this hypothesis. Metaph. i. 3. 29. Pliny testifies to the deep knowledge of Orpheus in the properties of plants, but Pytha¬ goras the Samian is the first who is known to have written any treatise upon botany. This philosopher procured his information from the Egyptian Magi. He first taught the miraculous uses of the Scilki maritima, in prolonging life ; the bulb pickled in vinegar was affirmed to gift the vinegar with the power of extending the period of human existence to the hundred and seventeenth year. He declared the virtues of Anise against the bite of scorpions, the power of Brassica, and of Sinapis. 30. Empedocles, of Agrigentum, one of the disciples of Pythagoras, wrote a poem on the agency of the four elements. He conceived that plants were formed from the united agency of fire and earth, that they grew upwards through the influence of the former element, and down¬ wards by the action of the latter, that air was diffused through their branches, earth through their roots. 31. This opinion may, however, be rather considered a3 part of the doctrines of the exoteric philosophers, who adopted the notions of the poets about the origin of things, and supported them by the subtlety of materialism. That plants are animated beings they held to be proved by the motions of which they are susceptible, and by the elasticity of their branches, which, when bent, resume their natural position, as soon as the external power is removed. They believed that plants were all subject to a metamorphosis into animals, or the contrary; and that no man could be sure that he had not, at some period of his existence, been a plant, a bird, or a fish. For this reason the laurel was held to be the noblest of trees, as being that into which man is translated after death. They admitted that the sexes were united in plants : but they supposed that they became separated upon the change into animals. They were moreover believers in the presence of a soul in plants; of a peculiar nature, indeed, but endued with intelligence and yvcjmg, appetites and sensations. Even reason was ascribed to them by Sextus Empiricus. He declared that they were propagated by eggs, in the way of animals, and that their leaves were analogous to the hairs of animals, and the scales of fishes, that their root performed the functions of head and mouth, because it was through it that nutriment was introduced into the system. 32. Similar opinions were held by Anaxa¬ goras, of Clazomene, who also thought that earth was the mother and the sun the father of vege¬ tation. That their spiritus, or soul, was absorbed from the air by their leaves, and exhaled by the same organs. 33. Democritus the Abderite, who spent his early life in travelling through Persia and Egypt, adopted the notions of the Magi respecting the supernatural powers of herbs. He is said to have composed a work upon their hidden and miracu¬ lous virtues. 34. These and a few more are those who are supposed to have existed previously to the time of Aristotle. Among their opinions it is curious to observe how much of truth, even in their abstract speculations, is mixed with the fables of their poets. It is evident that they were acquainted with the sexes of plants, and with the principle that all vegetables proceed from ova. Some light was also possessed upon the functions o leaves. 35. But it was with Aristotle that the real origin of natural science must be said to have arisen. That extraordinary man embraced in his observations the whole circle of nature, from the structure and generation of the Sepia, the Nautilus, and other similar animals, to the elephant and to bipeds. That he paid extensive at¬ tention to plants is to be inferred from his own statement, that he had written two entire books upon the subject. He calls these books a Theory of Vegetation, and, in another place, he promises that he will enter at large upon the nature of vegetables. These books are even cited by Diogenes Laertius, v. 25, Athenceus, xiv. xviii. p. 652, and by the scholiast Nicander, v. 645, p. 42. The books which have come down to our time are, however, believed to be forgeries. They correspond neither with the gravity, the dignity, nor the erudition of Aristotle. But much may be gathered from the genuine writings of this classic, as to the nature of the opinions which he held respecting plants, as forming a particular portion of animated nature ; and most especially as to his ideas of their analogies with animals. - He appears to have applied himself, with incredible industry, and most remarkable ingenuity^to the discovery of their relative degrees of organisation, and of those functions and pheno¬ mena which bore upon his own philosophical system. He was the first to conceive the specu¬ lative notion of a continuous chain of organisation, in which the most perfect beings gradually de¬ generate into an imperfect state. 1 Nature,’ he declares, 1 is continually progressing from in¬ animate objects to animals, and this through beings which are animated, indeed, but which