The Art of Simpling

The Art of Simpling was first published in 1656 -- more than twenty years after Thomas Johnson's corrected and amended edition of Gerard's herbal and twelve or so years after John Parkinson's monumental Theatrum Botanicum. It followed Nicholas Culpepper's well-known classic by just four years and came out the same year as the final edition of Parkinson's Paradisi, which added a fourth section on herbs and other useful plants for the kitchen garden. And yet, already Coles laments the waning ...