Instruire, guérir, servir. Formation, recherche et pratique médicales en France et en Allemagne pendant la deuxième moitié du XIXe siècle

the Michaelis-Jena Ratcliffe Prize for Folklore in 1993. Some interesting generalizations emerge: the difference commonly understood between the medicinal activity of roots as opposed to shoots or leaves; the multiple uses of a single plant; the disdain for polypharmacy. In passing, Hatfield argues that the doctrine of signatures was unlikely to be much used by country dwellers in the form proposed by Paracelsus. She suggests instead that signatures emerged by reverse osmosis, so to speak, in that it would be only natural to seek a memorable feature of a plant that helped specific conditions. The yellow bark of the barberry might serve as a mnemonic that the plant itself (not the bark) was useful for jaundice. Elsewhere Hatfield proposes that the magical, mythic elements attached to this form of vernacular and domestic knowledge arose not so much through self-medication but rather crystallized around those people in a community usually referred to as healers. All this is illuminating, a salutary message that the history of medicine is largely a history of learned medicine that leaves the common experience of plant lore and plant use relatively undocumented.