‘The Roots of Healing’: The Books That Fed Our Knowledge of Medicinal Plants

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.