O conhecimento taxonômico na obra elementos de botânica geral e médica (1877), De joaquim monteiro caminhoá

Joaquim Monteiro Caminhoá (1836-1896) foi um dos mais atuantes cientistas do Império do Brasil. Contudo, sua trajetória enquanto estudioso da Botânica ainda não foi devidamente estudada, e as suas produções científicas ainda não foram analisadas criticamente de forma densa. Temos como objetivo analisar a obra Elementos de Botânica Geral e Médica, de autoria de Joaquim Monteiro Caminhoá, publicada em 1877, em particular o capítulo intitulado Taxonomia, que integra o volume número dois, e a sua contribuição para o processo de emergência e consolidação das ciências naturais no Império do Brasil. Joaquim Monteiro Caminhoá (1836-1896) was one of the most active scientists of the Brazilian Empire. However, his trajectory as a Botany scholar has not yet been properly studied, and his scientific productions have not yet been critically analyzed in a dense manner. Our objective is to analyze the work Elements of General and Medical Botany, by Joaquim Monteiro Caminhoá, published in 1877, in particular the chapter entitled Taxonomy, which integrates volume number two, and its contribution to the process of emergence and consolidation of natural sciences in the Empire of Brazil.

Assessment of genetic resources of medicinal plants collection of M.M. Gryshko National Botanic Garden of the NAS of Ukraine

Aim. The purpose of the work was to analyze the collection fund of medicinal plants of the Medical Botany laboratory at M.M. Gryshko National Botanic Garden of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. Methods. We used the methods of information analysis and synthesis and computer methods of information database processing. Results. The stages of collection formation, created by attracting seed and planting material from the natural flora of Ukraine and by exchange with the botanical gardens of Ukraine and the world are shown. Selection of the source material was carried out taking into account the introduction methods of genus complexes and climatic analogues. The carried out analysis of the taxonomic composition was represented by species belonging to 62 families. The collection has 388 species, including 385 flowering plants, 2 gymnosperms, 1 fern. Among them there are: 280 perennials, 52 biennials, 53 annuals. The introduced plants make up the significant percentage of the collections. Considerable attention is paid to the preservation of the collection fund valuable varieties. The rare and endangered medicinal plant species cultivated and conserving in the collection. Conclusions. The collection of the Medical Botany laboratory is a valuable gene pool of medicinal plants, including rare and endangered listed in the Red Data Book of Ukraine; material is not only for scientific research, but it is also is a base of scientific and educational activities for students, post-graduate students and schoolchildren. Keywords: genetic resources, collection fund, medicinal plants, introduced plants, rare plants.

Travniki, Travniki and Travniki: Herbals, Herbalists and Herbaria in Seventeenth-Century and Eighteenth-Century Russia

This essay provides a sustained investigation of the term travnik, a capacious word that came to mean herbalist, herbal and herbarium over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Though different in physical form, all three were united during this period by the body of knowledge they contained about the botanical world. Taken togetherthey reveal the ways in which knowledge of plants, from folk collecting traditions, to medical botany, to binomial nomenclature, was generated in the productive tension between foreign expertise and local knowledge. The focus here on translation highlights the diverse array of influences that contributed to the early modern Russian conception of the natural world. The travnik as herbal is explored through two centuries of secondary sources, while the travnik as herbalist relies heavily on published primary documents. The third section on the travnik as herbarium focuses on eighteenth century herbaria and the transposition of new scientific methods onto older forms of knowledge making.

The evolution of medical education and what scares us about it

In the early Middle Ages, future doctors were not students; they were apprentices. Teaching consisted of knowledge about herbs and surgical skills, “taught” by older, experienced peers. In monasteries, monks occupied themselves copying classic texts in the scriptorium. These sources, however, were not consulted by apprentices at the time. In convents and nurseries, manuals of medical botany, especially the ones about herbs of their local orchards, were preferable reading. The first record on medical training in literature is attributed to Charaka, a Hindu physician who in 500 BC referred to the distinctive idea of a “master” from whom one could learn the art and medical practice. In the tenth century, in a somewhat pre-academic teaching style developed in Salerno and later in the Alexandrian model, Mentors were respected celebrities, authorized and of great powers. Shortly afterwards, Constantin came to Monte Cassino to translate Arabic medical writings into Greek (internationalizing medicine) and the University of Bologna was founded on September 18, 1088, by and for students.

Natural History in the Jesuit Missions

This chapter considers Jesuit natural history in the period of the Old Society (from Renaissance to Enlightenment). Five topics have been selected for discussion: a general, formal characterization of Jesuit writing on nature, with emphasis on works produced in the missions; the symbolic and material exchanges presupposed by the practice of missionary natural history, including medical botany (exchange of knowledge between Jesuits and native experts, interchange of information between Jesuits and learned naturalists in Europe and among them, circulation of biological species); the approach to marvels in the animal world by the kind of natural philosophy embedded in the works of Athnasius Kircher, Caspar Schott, and Juan Eusebio Nieremberg; the issues raised by the natural histories of the New World, in particular in Iberian America; and the response of the Jesuits to the ascent of Enlightened natural history as represented by Carl Linnaeus and George Louis Leclerc, Compte de Buffon.

Rehabilitating Botany in the Postwar Moment: National Promise and the Encyclopedism of Eduardo Quisumbing’s Medicinal Plants of the Philippines (1951)

In 1951, plant taxonomist Eduardo Quisumbing published Medicinal Plants of the Philippines, a 1,234–page volume on the palliative and curative applications of Philippine flora. Considered the standard contemporary reference on medical botany, Quisumbing’s work has informed generations of human scientists, botanists, and chemists from the archipelago. This paper, however, poses the question: What did Quisumbing, a trained orchidist, have to do with such a wide-ranging postwar publication—one quite distant from his scientific specialization—that would be (mistakenly) remembered as his magnum opus? Through a close reading of the text informed by the work’s intertextuality and Quisumbing’s personal archive, I argue that Medicinal Plants of the Philippines captures a type of encyclopedism undertaken in order to recuperate Manila’s Bureau of Science following World War ii. This encyclopedism speaks to the book’s curious character: strictly speaking, it is neither a pharmacopoeia nor a flora. Instead, it is a compendium of principally invasive species and their medicinal uses around the world that draws from over 630 academic publications. Caught within the tangle of postwar national reconstruction efforts, Quisumbing’s book evidences a considerable investment in intellectual knowledge production to assert the country’s newfound independence while shoring up public support for Philippine botanic and scientific research.