Power and pathogens
Academics and theorists have been discussing the intersections of science, medicine, history and culture for years, but none of them has made those relationships as forcefully apparent as the shock of our current global public health crisis. As the historians of medicine Erica Charters and Richard A. McKay have written: “Epidemics are not solely a function of pathogens; they are also a function of how society is structured, how political power is wielded in the name of public health, how quantitative data is collected, how diseases are categorised and modelled, and how histories of disease are narrated. Each of these activities has its own histories.” In orderly to properly understand what’s happening to us, we have to understand these histories, too.
Physick Herbes
This newsletter suggests that one way of doing this might be through plants. Specifically, the kinds of “Physick Herbes” that early modern writers said could cure our “sundry griefes”: feverfew, hyssop, nettle, marigold, elderflower. These plants have been found in Physic Gardens for hundreds of years, and many are still used in medicines today. As well as medical histories, they always have literary and artistic tales to tell. But unlike artworks or books held in special collections, they remain accessible in gardens, in streets and in fields. They are there for us to see, hold, pick, taste and smell; to crush between our fingers, or throw into a cooking pot. This makes them a radically democratic, embodied, sensory form of evidence through which to interpret our current moment of medical crisis.
Botanical Biographies
So, in order to try and make sense of where we are and how we got here, I’ll be writing a monthly profile—a sort of botanical biography—of a medicinal plant. Some are grown in the Physic Garden of the Barber-Surgeon’s Hall, near where I live in London. Others can be found in pavement cracks, building sites, or wherever there’s turned-over ground. By examining the medical and cultural histories of these “Phisicke Herbes,” as well as writing about how they feel, smell, look and taste, I’ll try to find out what lessons they might hold for our disease-stricken world. In offering a richer, more embodied kind of historical context (or at least some weird botanical facts and etymological quirks), I hope that The Physic Garden can serve in some small way as a moment of calm and solace, a balm or a salve for our “sundry griefes.”
