From Magic to Microscope
Section 02
Between Signature
and Anatomy
Between Signature and Anatomy
Click into the circles to see the signature of every plant
Walnut: The Signature of Brain
For many early modern physicians systematically trained in anatomy and botany, the peculiar brain-like shape of walnuts was miraculous. Physicians anatomised the walnuts and compared their shells, membranes and cores to the structure of the brain.
The Kernel hath the very figure of the Brain, and therefore it is very profitable for the Brain, and resists poysons; For if the Kernel be bruised, and moystned with the quintessence of Wine, and laid upon the Crown of the Head, it comforts the brain and head mightily’.
As shown in the case of walnuts, the striking resemblance between plants and human body parts inspired many physicians to innovate their teaching. English polymath and educator Samuel Hartlib believed that by teaching the knowledge of signatures at school, ‘Boyes and Girles could soone bee brought to understand the whole course of Physick’.
‘Wall-nuts have the perfect Signature of the Head:
The outer husk or green Covering, represent the Pericranium, or outward skin of the skull, whereon the hair groweth, and therefore salt made of those husks or barks, are exceeding good for wounds in the head.
The inner wooddy shell hath the Signature of the Skull, and the little yellow skin, or Peel, that covereth the Kernell of the hard Meninga & Pia Mater, which are the thin scarfes that envelope the brain.
The Kernel hath the very figure of the Brain, and therefore it is very profitable for the Brain, and resists poysons; For if the Kernel be bruised, and moystned with the quintessence of Wine, and laid upon the Crown of the Head, it comforts the brain and head mightily’.
— William Coles, Adam in Eden, or, Natures paradise: The History of Plants, Fruits, Herbs and Flowers (1657).
Image of a walnut, Public Domain.
3-D cardboard model of the human brain, by J. F. Lehmann and Eduard M. W. Weber, German, c. 1966. Wh Ac 6543
Orchis: The Signature of Testicles
Many species of orchis with two round tubers have long been considered to have the signature of male testicles. As physician and chymist Oswald Croll wrote in his 1609 Tractatus de Signaturis Internis Rerum (Treatise of Signatures of Internal Things): ‘Flowers of Cycosorchis invite Men to Pleasure, and Lasciviousness, inciting, provoking, and encreasing Venery’.
Botanical wallchart, depicting roots or tubers of Palmate and Ovate varieties. By John Stevens Henslow. English, mid-19th Century. Wh Ac No 4933
Giambattista della Porta, De humana physiognomonia (Ursellis, 1601), first edition 1586. Whipple Library, 20:20.
Palma Christi: The Signature of Hands
‘Palma Christi (Palm of Christ)’, which can be understood as castor bean or Ricinus today, was considered to have the signature of hands in early modern medicine. Its name came from the green leaves spreading like a hand, and the juice of those leaves was considered effective against wound and pain in hands or other limb parts. The castor oil made from its seeds has been traditionally used against all kinds of diseases including dropsy, gouts, worms and deafness, which might be another reason for its name ‘Palma Christi’ — a medicinal plant that heals all diseases miraculously.
Giambattista della Porta, Phytognomonica (Frankfurt, 1591). First edition 1588. Image from Whipple Library, 20:20.
In Phytognomonica, Giambattista della Porta illustrated several plants with the signature of hands (right to left):
A kind of Iris with finger-like roots, probably Iris Tuberosa (Hermodactylus tuberosus) today;
A flowering grass with its top sprouting in five like a hand, possibly corresponding to what we now know as murainagrass (Ischaemon);
And some orchis species with palmate roots, which were also called ‘Palma Christi’ in many early modern herbals.
Otto Brunfels, Herbarum vivae eicones (Strassburg, 1530), 102. Whipple Library, 63:18. Satyrion, named after the spirit Satyr in Greek mythology, could refer to several types of orchis in early modern herbals. Here, the female Satyrion illustrated by Brunfels appears to be the same type of orchis illustrated by Giambattista della Porta, with the signature of the hand on its roots. But unlike Porta, Brunfels depicted its roots in a more realistic way.
Liverworts: The Signature of Liver
As indicated in Wolfgang Fabricius’s thesis Ἀπορημα βοτανικον de Signaturis Plantarum
(1653), the fibres and smooth texture of liverworts were considered signatures of liver. In Adam in Eden, or, Natures paradise: The History of Plants, Fruits, Herbs and Flowers
(1657), Oxford-trained botanist William Coles further explained why liverwort had the signature of liver: both because of its visual and tactile similitude with liver, and because of ‘the eminent Vertues it hath in all distempers of the Liver: to coole and cleanse it, as often as occasion serves, and helpeth also inflammations in any part and the yellow Jaundise likewise’.
Liverworts and moss. Image from benet2006 , CC-BY-2.0.
Anatomical model of a human torso opened, showing liver and other internal organs. 19th Century. Wh Ac 2295
