Botany and Drugs

The study of plants in the Renaissance focused on their medicinal properties and on proper identification of plants described by ancient writers as well as of unknown plants introduced to Europe by travelers and explorers. Medicinal lore and basic information about each plant were published in herbals, books consulted by all levels of society. Humanistic editions of classical texts concerning botany included works by Aristotle, Theophrastus, Galen, Pliny, and, above all, Dioscorides. Renaissance botanists also learned about numerous other plants through Arabic sources. During the 16th century, many hundreds of plants were added to the classical list, many of them illustrated from nature in lifesized woodcuts. By 1600 botanists had described approximately 5,400 more plants than the 600 known to Dioscorides. Each plant was assumed to have medicinal properties, regardless of whether

SCIENCE AND MEDICINE

10.3 Illustration of a pineapple. Woodcut in the first edition of Tractado de las drogas, y medicinas de las Indias, con sus plantas (Treatise on drugs and medicines of the Indies, with its plants, 1578) by Cristobal de Acosta and Garda de Orta. Many exotic plants were studied for their potential medicinal uses. (Photograph courtesy of Sotheby’s, Inc., © 2003)

These were fully understood. Botanical gardens were established in several cities to enable researchers to study living plants in a controlled environment. The first successful examples were planted in northern Italy during the 1540s and 1550s. Herbs were also studied in herbaria, collections of pressed plants, of which the earliest known example dates from 1532.