Herb gardens were developed to produce drugs both simple and compound. Natural history requires keen observation and is not amenable to experiment. Theophrastus lived from 380 until 287 BC, was a botanist, and a disciple of Aristotle. Aristotle saw living creatures forming a hierarchy of increasing complexity. Pliny the Elder lived from 23 until 79 AD and provided the travellers’ tales and illustrations used in the medieval beastieries. Plants and animals were considered to exist for the use of human beings.

Scientific results rest on ever finer analysis of objects, until the elements of the object are known at their simplest; this said, the evanescent quality of life is the synergy that results from the sum of the parts working together. Science grew through collecting and cataloguing specimens that were documented in books illuminated by illustrations done in the then new naturalist manner.

After collecting and cataloguing comes classification and nomenclature, an extremely difficult task because it requires the classifier to choose a method of classification and naming, the worth of which cannot really be seen until it is far advanced; then, when some new object is discovered that doesn’t quite fit with the system, the classifier is tempted to make it fit because the alternative is to abandon the scheme of classification and start again.

During the Renaissance, artists had a more accurate understanding of anatomy than doctors. Research was stifled by diversion of great minds towards translating and collating existing texts. It was a case of too much book learning, too little practical experience and fundamental research.

Experiment made its first appearence at Hippocrates medical school at Cos, between 460 and 360 BC. Hippocrates’s greatest principle was that nature is the best healer and that the physician should remove any obstacles from her path; an extension to this is that the patient should not put obstacles in the way of nature and good health. Dissection was illegal, so a working knowledge of the interior of the human body was difficult or impossible; Renaissance times changes things, so that dissection became more frequent.

William Harvey determined the circulation of blood in the body during his lifetime from 1578 until 1657; see De Matu Cordis. Harvey recognised the heart as a pump; in his age, pumps had grown in importance and would have been readily understood. Harvey’s exposition of the circulation of blood omitted the capillaries because they could not be seen without the aid of a lens; lenses did not become available until the end of the 17th century.