Of Fumitorie” from ‘The Herball,’ or, ‘Generall historie of plantes,’ page 297 and 298
John Gerard; John Norton
Description
Subject Matter:
John Gerard’s Herball was one of the earliest and most popular botanical books in English; it describes and illustrates plants from all over the world. Gerard trained as a barber-surgeon, but spent most of his time studying horticulture. He had a large garden, where he experimented with growing domestic and international plants. The Herball was one of the first English books to describe the potato, a crop from the Americas that would become a staple in European agriculture. Its appearance in the Herball reflects England’s colonial movements across the Atlantic in the 16th century.
The Herball combines content from several previously published sources. The woodcuts were taken from a different botanical book and much of the text is a translation of an earlier Flemish botanical book. Gerard gave the material his own spin, including folklore about the plants.
On the front and back of this page, Gerard describes types of fumitory plants, herbs in the Poppy family that were often used medicinally in the 16th century. Woodcuts illustrate the plants and were colored by hand after the pages were printed in London.
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