Digital Exhibits
Curated historical collections combining rare images, texts, and scholarly insights
William Woodville’s Medical Botany
A Foundational Work in Scientific Herbalism
By William Woodville
In the closing decades of the eighteenth century—an era poised between traditional herbal medicine and the rise of modern scientific pharmacology—few works stand as prominently as Medical Botany by William Woodville. Published between 1790 and 1794, this ambitious, multi-volume treatise sought to bring order, accuracy, and scientific rigor to the study of medicinal plants
Vermont History · Proceedings of the Vermont Historical Society
Winter 1988 · Vol. 56, No. 1
Reprinted with Permission
Samuel Thomson's Botanic System
Alternative Medicine in Early Nineteenth Century Vermont
By JOANNA SMITH WEINSTOCK
The Thomsonian movement, a botanical alternative to early nineteenth-century medicine, originated in New England with Samuel Thomson. His system challenged the era of “heroic medicine” — an age of bloodletting and mineral drugs — offering in its place a democratic, plant-based approach that spread rapidly across Vermont and beyond.
Johann Hieronymus Kniphof and Botanica in originali, seu Herbarium vivum
In the long history of botanical illustration, few works stand apart as boldly as Botanica in originali, seu Herbarium vivum, the remarkable 18th-century herbal created by the German physician and botanist Johann Hieronymus Kniphof.