Botany and Medicine

In both theoretical and practical medicine, the study of plants played a significant role in the early modern period. As branches of medical knowledge, herbs, plants, and vegetal bodies were the subject of (1) the fabrication of therapeutics, called simples; (2) the discipline of signatures, the knowledge of the hidden key connecting bodies; and (3) the physiological study of living functions, such as growth, nutrition, and generation. Drawing on ancient scholarly tradition, the work of early modern physicians, chymists, women, and natural philosophers reveals the medical importance of botany, which slowly attained an autonomous status in the seventeenth century.