Herbalism-Part II

As time passed, physicians in general ignored the astrology and 'doctrine of signatures,' and did the best they could with the information that was available.

In the 1600's, the advances in herbal medicine were led by botanists, who like Linnaeus himself, were trained in medicine. In a sense, herbalism gave birth to botany and botanical gardens. It took some years for botany to become an independent field of study apart from herbalism and medicine. The early botanical gardens were in fact physic gardens where these herbal plants were grown so the scientists could properly study the plants' effects. In addition, the voyages of discovery added many new herbal remedies to the usages of the time.

The New World manuscripts were wonderful sources of information on herbal use by native peoples. However, it was sometimes difficult to correctly identify the plants mentioned because the local names were given in the native languages. In a work by Hernandez, for example, there are 37 plants called iztac-patil (which would translate to be white medicine), and 20 called cihuapatil (for woman's medicine).

Another problem is that these old manuscripts provided scant details on the exact dosages that were given.

Under Montezuma, botanical gardens were established in the 1400's to provide the doctors with raw materials, and as a source of experimental studies for the plants' effect on humans.

There was a list of herbal plants used by the Aztecs, and it clearly identified 16 of these as being particularly effective.

In the New World, the oldest written source of information on medicinal plants is an herbal written in one of the Aztec dialects, Nahuatl, by de la Cruz in 1552. This was later translated into Latin by Badiano, hence the name the Badiano Herbal. The book was part of a political effort of the Catholic monks to curry favor with Philip II to defend their forced conversions of the Aztecs.

During the 1530's Brother Bernard Sahagun also studied Aztec herbalism. He actually submitted written questionnaires to local practitioners, all of which was written in Nahuatl. The resulting manuscript was later translated into Spanish.

From 1570 to 1577 the personal physician of Philip II was Francisco Hernandez. He gathered all sorts of information on the natural history of Mexico, much of which has since been lost.

Francisco Ximenez, a Dominican monk, worked in a part of Mexico where the Aztecs still maintained an herb garden. Ximinez published what he could find of Hernandez's work plus his observations of the local people's use of plants.

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