I hold in my hand a plant-filled manuscript from the 1780s that was handwritten by a British doctor who was buddies with Benjamin Franklin. It’s two-hundred-some pages of original watercolors accompanied by descriptions of each plant and their uses handwritten in a narrow margin on the left side of each page. The author and artist, Joshua Webster, organized the plants according to the ailments he believed they could cure. He gave each “medical virtue” – including “nervous,” “strengthness” and “stomachius” – its own section.
The bound book, titled Webster’s Distribution of English Medicinal Plants, is the only copy in the world and it lives at the library at the Oak Spring Garden Foundation in Northern Virginia. In October I spent a week at Oak Spring Garden as part of a landscape writing workshop.
Oak Spring Garden is the former estate of Paul and Bunny Mellon. Paul Mellon actually grew up just down the street from me here in Pittsburgh, a descendant of the founders of Mellon Bank. They both inherited great wealth from their families and this Northern Virginia estate was a place where they both pursued their passions. Paul bred and raised race horses and those horses went on to win nearly every horse racing trophy that exists in the world. I actually stayed in a room in the former horse stables.
Meanwhile, Bunny pursued her love of gardening. She hadn’t received a traditional horticultural education but she had a knack for plant selection and design. She transformed the land around the Oak Spring Garden home into a beautiful garden that took inspiration from both British and French gardens. Later, she designed the White House Rose Garden.
Bunny collected botanic art and texts and had a library built on the property to house them. She wanted her collection to be accessible to plant researchers and other horticultural-obsessed folks (like me). Today it’s part of the Oak Spring Garden Foundation which offers a range of residencies, fellowships and short courses for the botanically-minded. The property still employs a large gardening staff who continues to re-envision the grounds and they also run a CSA for locals.
So that’s how I ended up sitting in this storied library looking at a rare botanical manuscript. I was especially excited when I’d reach a page about one of the common weeds from my Pittsburgh backyard. In some ways, the weed is only in my yard because it’s in this book. Because of the common herbal medical knowledge of the time, Europeans deemed this plant important and tucked a seed into their luggage before boarding a ship bound for the Americas. So many of these plants would be categorized under the category of “nuisance” but Joshua Webster saw them as cures to the ailments of the day.
In the spread about coltsfoot, a common weed in my yard that sends out yellow flowers in the early spring, Joshua notes that:
A strong decoction of the leaves has been found when continued some time serviceable in the Kings Evil.
According to some googling, “kings evil” is a condition, often related to tuberculosis, that causes swollen lymph nodes. It was believed that it could be cured if a member of royalty touched you. I’m sure touching coltsfoot was much easier than touching royalty in those days (and probably today?) so I’m sure that Joshua’s recipe was appreciated.
I also really appreciated Joshua’s write-up on dandelions which included this portion:
Farmers have thought that it [dandelions] hurts their meadows and hinders the grass from growing but I am of opinion with D. Bradley that it makes the hay much better and wholesome for the cattle than it would be without, and is well known that all cattle are fonder of that hay which has in it a variety of herbs than they are that made from what they call clean grass.
I was delighted to read that Joshua wasn’t a zealous weeder. According to his research, the cows like their hay better with dandelions. There are no cows in my neighborhood but I do know that pollinators like lawns with dandelions more too.
I’m thankful that this lone, unique manuscript ended up at the Oak Spring Garden Foundation, where the current librarian Tony Willis, is making it available to scholars and other interested folks. A few years back, the Oak Spring Garden Foundation published a book, An Oak Spring Herbaria, that compiled excerpts from some of their most unique botanical texts. In the section about Joshua Webster, they put his manuscript in context:
We do not know if Webster ever intended to publish this work. What is clear is that it served as a tool for his study of medicinal plants. Sometimes the space in the left-hand margin of the drawing was left blank or contained only a few annotations, awaiting further additions as Webster pursued his daily studies. Webster's work follows the tradition of the manuscript herbal, which had been used by physicians, herbalists, and pharmacists since the Middle Ages to record and pass on their knowledge.
Leafing through the two-hundred-forty-plus year old book, it felt very special to come across these incomplete margin notes and empty pages. Joshua knew that his work was never done. There’s always more to learn about plants.
Do you have any favorite books about plants, ancient or modern? I’d love to hear about them!
And one more thing: In addition to writing this book, Josha Webster was also the inventor of Cerevisia Anglicana, a kind of cure-all beer that was rich in Vitamin B. Benjamin Franklin was a fan of it too. Joshua credited this beer for his reaching the age of 92, at a time when the average age of death was below forty.
Bunnies also adore dandelions, and growing up on a small family farm, our cows did prefer a mixture instead of just clean grass. 🥰
Wonderful discovery! Glad you got to spend time with this gem.