The German polymath Hildegard von Bingen, a Benedictine abbess in the High Middle Ages, developed a holistic view of healing while working in her monastery's herb garden and caring for the sick in its infirmary.
She likened a physician treating patients to a gardener tending to plants. Between 1151 and 1158, von Bingen put this perspective to parchment, composing "Physica," a medical treatise that documents the medicinal properties of 230 plants. Many of the herbal remedies she describes - ginger to treat stomachaches and aloe to soothe rashes - are still used today.
A 1533 printed copy of "Physica" is displayed in "The Roots of Healing: Six Centuries of Medical Herbals," an exhibit on view in the Hanke Exhibition Gallery in Sterling Memorial Library through March 22 that explores the history, content, and influence of herbals - written guides that describe plants and their medicinal properties.
Drawn from the Yale Library's collections, particularly those at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library and the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library, the objects on view include early 15th-cenutry herbals that pre-date Gutenberg's printing press to modern-day examples.
"Herbal-derived medicines still have a prominent place in our hospitals and medicine cabinets," said Dr. Matthew Morrison, an emergency physician and lecturer in Yale College's Medical Humanities program, who curated the exhibition. "The herbals on display intertwine art, botany, human physiology, and spirituality. They demonstrate the idea that there is no science without a human touch, without a human eye."
