Doctrine of signatures

The Doctrine of Signatures, also known as the Doctrine of Correspondences, states that herbs or animals have physical or behavioral traits that mirror the ailment it can successfully treat. Theological justifications such as that of botanist William Cole was that God would want to show men what plants would be useful for. The doctrine of signatures has a debated origin. Many historians believe it begins with primitive thinking methods while other historians believe it originated with Dioscorides and popularized by the 16th and 17th centuries after Jakob Böhme coined the doctrine of signatures in his book The Signature of All Things.

This theory is a possible explanation for the ancient discovery of medicinal properties, however, there is not definitive proof as to whether the medicinal property or the connection in physical/behavioral traits was realized first. The theory later became a scientific basis for trying new remedies solely based upon their qualities in an attempt to find new medicines. While there are some homeopathic remedies that are still used today which have been connected to this theory, there are also remedies from this theory which have been found harmful. For instance, birthwort (so-called because of its resemblance to the uterus) was once used widely for pregnancies, but is carcinogenic and very damaging to the kidneys, owing to its aristolochic acid content. As a defense against predation, many plants contain toxic chemicals, the action of which is not immediately apparent, or easily tied to the plant rather than other factors.

History

The origins of the doctrine of signatures is debated by historians. The concept of the doctrine of signatures dates back to Hippocratic medicine and the belief that "cures for human ills were divinely revealed in nature, often through plants." The concept would be further developed by Dioscorides. Dioscorides would provide ample descriptions of plant medications through various drawings, detailing the importance of their look, name, shelf life, how to tell when plants have gone bad, and how to properly harvest the crop for medical use. Paracelsus (1493–1541) developed the concept further, writing that "Nature marks each growth ... according to its curative benefit", and it was further developed by Giambattista della Porta in his Phytognomonica (1588).

The writings of Jakob Böhme (1575–1624) coined the term doctrine of signatures within his book The Signature of All Things (or Signatura Rerum) published in 1621. He suggested that God marked objects with a sign, or "signature", for their purpose, specifically that "...to that Signature, his inward form is noted in the form of his face; and thus also is a beaft [beast],an herb, and the trees; every thing as it is inwardly (in its innate vertue [virtue] and quality) fo it is outwardly figned [signed]...". Plants bearing parts that resembled human body-parts, animals, or other objects were thought to have useful relevance to those parts, animals, or objects. The "signature" could sometimes also be identified in the environments or specific sites in which plants grew.

The English physician-philosopher Sir Thomas Browne in his discourse The Garden of Cyrus (1658) uses the Quincunx pattern as an archetype of the 'doctrine of signatures' pervading the design of gardens and orchards, botany and the Macrocosm at large.

The 17th century botanist William Coles supposed that God had made 'Herbes for the use of men, and hath given them particular Signatures, whereby a man may read ... the use of them.' Coles's The Art of Simpling and Adam in Eden, stated that walnuts were good for curing head ailments because in his opinion, "They have the perfect signatures of the head". Regarding Hypericum, he wrote, "The little holes whereof the leaves of Saint Johns wort are full, doe resemble all the pores of the skin and therefore it is profitable for all hurts and wounds that can happen thereunto."

In the late 19th century, Andrew Dickson White published his book History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom which pushed back against the doctrine of signatures. White explains the connectiveness between Christianity and the doctrine of signatures as its increased presence and significance in the orthodox faith as theological pseudoscience. White further explains about how the doctrine of signatures developed into the church as a justification to "... disgusting the demon the body which he tormented..." and how "...the patient was made to swallow or apply to himself various unspeakable ordures..." with various use of animal organs as medications to protect against demons.

For the late medieval viewer, the natural world was vibrant with images of the Deity: 'as above, so below,' a Hermetic principle expressed as the relationship between macrocosm and microcosm; the principle is rendered sicut in terra. Michel Foucault expressed the wider usage of the doctrine of signatures, which rendered allegory more real and more cogent than it appears to a modern eye:

Late 20th century mentions of the doctrine of signatures include 5 cited publications in the 1996 Economic Botany Index (1947-1996). In the early 21st century, Amots Dafni and Efraim Lev conducted a survey and used literature to understand how the doctrine of signatures has evolved in the Middle East. Their studies show that the doctrine of signatures evolved into four main categories: "Similarity of plant or plant part to a damaged human organ; Similarity to animal shape or behavior; Similarity of plant color to the color of the disease or the medical phenomena; Similarity to plant habitat or characteristic."

Remedies Linked to the Doctrine of Signatures

It is worth noting that it is possible that these are post hoc attributions-- the appearance and treatment linked after the medicinal property was discovered. Depending on the article, remedies connected to the doctrine vary in number and consistency.

Scientific, Spiritual, and Social Context

Signatures are often described as post hoc attributions and mnemonics used to remember the properties of a plant rather than the reason it was originally used. There is no scientific or historical evidence that plant shapes and colors have aided in the discovery of their medical uses.

In Europe, the idea of doctrine of signatures was linked with Christian beliefs. However, similar theories were created within black magic with sympathetic magic. Similar theories have been observed all over the world in ancient Egypt, China, pre-Columbian America, and the middle east. This can also begin to explain how varied, and in some times contradictory, applications of the doctrine can be because traditional botany is subject to optimal foraging theory. Remedies would, in many cases, be based on the environmental availability of that resource rather than its objective effectiveness.

Some sociologists frame the doctrine of signatures as a type of "enchantment", the idea that it is not just what one observes but how they observe it and was a device used to elevate a group of "elite" observers who could interpret the world with more accuracy. In this context, the elite observers would be those that, for example, notice that lungwort's leaves look like lung tissue rather than posing that the dark red flowers could look like blood clots or the pink petals like irritated skin. The idea being that within many descriptors, the "correct" one that links to the signature could only be found by someone within this elite group.

It's important to note similar, yet conflicting theories like the theory of opposites where Galen supposed that a cold and wet thing could be used to treat an imbalance in a hot and dry organ. Hypotheses like these and the questions they posed, regardless of validity of the hypotheses themselves, inspired scientific investigations into the safety and usefulness of many plant based remedies.

In literature

The phrase "signatures of all things" appears in the beginning of episode 3 in James Joyce's novel Ulysses. The character Stephen Dedalus walking along the beach, thinking to himself "Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot". The Canadian poet Anne Szumigalski, 1922–1999, entitled her third full-length collection Doctrine of Signatures.

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