News 2017 March
Books
François-Joseph Cazin is the last French physician who cured farmers and poors only with the help of local plants. His Traité pratique et raisonné des plantes médicinales indigènes had no less than five editions from 1850 to 1886, the last ones being updated by his son.
This book is still the best synthesis on the subject. Cazin allies a detailed presentation of the clinical cases he cured with a bibliographical review which is astonishing by its breadth, as it goes from the physicians (Dioscorides, Gallen, Hippocrates, Arnaud de Villeneuve) and botanists (Mattioli, Dodoneus...) of Antiquity, the Middle Ages and Enlightenment, up to the most recent researches in the scientific pharmacopaeia of his century.
Cazin was constantly complaining about such physicians who were only fascinated by exotic medicines proposed by pharmacists, and that the common people could not afford. In his book, we see the respect he had for "bonnes femmes" and country priests who used traditional remedies. At the same time, he constantly warns against the dangers of identification or dosage errors and the inefficiency or toxicity of some medicines. From this point of view, reading this book will be useful for those who, today, tend to consider that everything natural must be intrinsically good.
All the book has been put on line at Pl@ntUse (in its 1868 version) and structured by species. It can be accessed either through the category Cazin 1868, or by the links placed in the species pages, or by the index of modern scientific names or of French names.
The reader is also invited to read the excellent presentation by Pierre Lieutaghi, expert in ethnobotany.
- Cazin, François-Joseph, 1868. Traité pratique et raisonné des plantes médicinales indigènes : avec un atlas de 200 planches lithographiées. 3e édition, revue et augmentée par le docteur Henri Cazin. Paris, P. Asselin. 2 tomes dont 1 de pl. en 1 vol., XXVIII-1189-XL p.
6 March 2017
