Flower
power CONTINUED |
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Many of the connections made during this era
remain obvious in plants' names to this day: maidenhair fern (to
treat baldness), liverwort (to treat liver problems), Hawthorn (for
splinters and, of course, thorn pricks) and lousewort (to stave
off lice). Indeed, all the "worts" were named as a way to make their
functions obvious. The shape of the birthwort flower, for example,
leaves little to the imagination.
William Coles also believed that identifying
and understanding plant signatures was the key to making them useful
to the oozing masses. He had a keen eye for the connection between
cure and complaint. Lungwort, of course, was used to treat breathing
difficulty since the plant's spotty leaves were reminiscent of the
splotchy surfaces of a diseased lung, and the hemispheric nature
of walnuts were sure to cure headaches, since they had "the perfect
signatures of the head."
SILLY SIGNATURES
Sometimes, though, Coles acknowledged that a plant's signature needed
to be drawn out before it could be identified. As a result, it took
some time before physicians finally realized that St. John's Wort
was the perfect cure for blood ailments, since the plant didn't
reveal its red signature until it had been pounded, marinated in
oil and left to ferment in the sun for several weeks.
Culpeper and Coles waged somewhat of a war
for dominance as to the right way to interpret plants' usefulness.
This was mainly because Culpeper liked his medicine with a side
of astrology. As his methods evolved over the years, planetary signatures
developed great importance in his methodology, which eventually
won out over Coles' plants-only approach. The cause of the patient's
ailment would therefore first have to be aligned with a planet in
order to discover which plant might cure it. He based his system
on the planetary signatures he took from the orbs' presumed physical
qualities and the characteristics of their mythological namesakes
-- Venus was connected to venereal diseases, red Mars ruled the
muscles and blood, the moon was responsible for fertility, breast
and stomach disorders and so on.
A woman's menstrual cramps, for example, would
be blamed on the influence of the moon and she would then be cured
with a plant with round fruit that looked like the moon. Culpeper
thoughtfully assigned each plant a planetary counterpart to make
diagnosis and treatment simpler. By the end of the 17th century,
the belief in the Doctrine of Signatures -- herbal and planetary
-- was so widespread that virtually every physician in the Western
world subscribed to it in at least some small way. It wasn't until
the end of the 19th century, really, that its influence in mainstream
medicine finally fell by the wayside.
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