José Luis Filpo CabanaThis image comes from a 15th-century illustrated herbal known as the Tractatus de Herbis, copied in Italy around the 1440s and now held in the British Library as manuscript Sloane 4016.
Herbals like this were practical science texts of their day. They blended botany, pharmacy, and folklore into visual field guides for physicians, apothecaries, and sometimes nobles wealthy enough to hire one. Each entry paired a plant portrait with notes about what it could treat, how to prepare it, and what dangers came with misuse.
The plant shown here is mandrake (genus Mandragora), which medieval writers swore could numb pain, induce sleep, and act as a kind of proto-anesthetic for minor surgery. They also called it an aphrodisiac, a fertility aid, and a defense against curses. Those extravagant claims came with a legend: people thought the root was almost human. You can see that belief literally painted into the page — the mandrake root is drawn as a tiny naked person, attached to the plant.
This wasn’t just artistic drama. For medieval readers, the “humanness” of the root was evidence of its special potency. A plant shaped like a body part was thought to heal that body part, a logic known as the “doctrine of signatures.”
The flip side of that power was fear. Harvesting mandrake was said to be deadly, because the plant would shriek when pulled from the ground and kill whoever heard it. Texts advised elaborate workarounds: dig around the root, tie it to a dog, then make the dog run so it yanks the plant free and dies in your place. That detail shows up again and again in late medieval herbals and marginal illustrations.
From a modern standpoint, mandrake really does contain biologically active alkaloids like scopolamine and atropine, which can sedate, dilate pupils, and in high doses cause hallucinations or outright toxicity. In other words: yes, there was pharmacology in there — wrapped in magic, fear, and gorgeous ink.