Doctrine of signatures : plant resembling a bee.

Plant resembling a bee.

Previous title, replaced November 2021: Doctrine of signatures: (above) a plant (orchid) resembling a bee, (below) a bee. Coloured ink drawing, c. 1923, after G.B. Della Porta

[1906]

1 drawing : ink with watercolour, on paper ; 46.8 x 29.6 cm

Doctrine of signatures. Plant resembling a bee. From a woodcut of the XVI century.

Wellcome Collection 524727i

Based on a woodcut in Phytognomonica Io. Baptistæ portæ Neopolitani, octo libris contenta by Giambattista della Porta (1535–1615). The first edition was published in Naples in 1588.

Exhibited in 'Rooted Beings' at Wellcome Collection, 24 March - 29 August 2022

Exhibited in the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum in the early 20th century

Wellcome Collection holds the 1588 edition of Phytognomonica, plus a later edition published in 1650. The plant resembling a bee can be found on page 160 (1588 edition) and page 273 (1650 edition).

In his Phytognomonica, Giambattista della Porta (1535–1615) discerns the hidden qualities of plants from the analogy of their forms with comparable features of animals. Those features of animals are "signs" which signify the same effects in plants which they have in animals: "ut cui signum competat, eidem et effectus: et cui effectio, pariter & signum: & quae signis vacent, & effectibus vacent" (Phytognomica, lib I, cap. xiii, Rouen 1650, p. 26); in English "That to which a sign belongs, to it also the effect belongs; and that to which the effect belongs, equally to it the sign belongs; and those which lack the signs also lack the effects"

Acquired for the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum, accessioned on 19 May 1916, registration number 2368