Im Gemeinstry Garten: Evidence of a Common Healing Garden in Seventeenth-Century Pennsylvania

Abstract

Im Gemeinstry Garten:Evidence of a Common Healing Garden in Seventeenth-Century Pennsylvania Miranda Mote (bio) Keywords early-American gardens, botany, medicinal gardens, German-American studies Francis Pastorius is well-known as a founder of Germantown, Pennsylvania, colonizer of Lenni-Lenape land, lawyer, and scholar. But he was also a passionate and imaginative gardener. He cultivated over two hundred and twenty species of ornamental, culinary, and medicinal plants in his Germantown garden, fields, orchard, and vineyard, and he kept at least four hives of honey bees in his garden between 1689 and 1719. He documented his garden and plants in detail in his garden journal (Monthly Monitor), medicinal notebook (Artzney und Kunst), garden and bee poetry found in various notebooks, and an elaborate encyclopedia that he called his Beehive. Pastorius's Artzney und Kunst documents aspects of early American botany, gardening, and ideas about nutrition and medicine as it was informed by his Pennsylvania and European knowledge and experience. The list of plants found in this notebook also documents hundreds of valuable plants cultivated in Pennsylvania gardens before 1720. Pastorius's Artzney und Kunst: ist all umsunst ohne Gottes Gunst, 1696 [Physic/Medicine and Art: is all in vain without the favor of God] is also referred to as his Talia Qualia Medicinalia, Artificialia & Naturalia [Such Things As Relate to Medicine, Artificial & Natural].1 He wrote this medicinal to advise colonists on how to use plants grown and found locally to improve human and animal health in Pennsylvania. It is a small, pocket-sized notebook with practical information about nourishment and [End Page 339] medicine—everything from remedies and tonics for pain associated with childbirth and menstruation to headaches and digestive discomforts. What is most significant about this notebook is that he was primarily concerned with cultivating and harvesting plants in or near Germantown so that he did not need to rely on imported European remedies. Because of this, it is not surprising that he listed practical uses of plants also used by Leni Lenape Native Americans in Pennsylvania. This notebook documents an interchange between his own German philosophies of science and medicine with those of Leni Lenape peoples. At the beginning of "Cap 82" [Chapter 82] of the notebook is his list of plants grown in their gardens or found in the woods for tonics, balms, oils, inks, and paints for household use. Just above the list of plants is his own poetic aphorism that describes his own natural philosophy as it was influenced by early-modern, German medical theories and his own life experience in Germany and Pennsylvania as a devout German Pietist. In Pastorius's mind, in the end, it was the divinity of plants that healed wounds and disease, not physicians. [top of page, title above plant list] Im Gemeinstry Garten ./. Gewüchs Eigenschafften, Krafft und Würkungen [In the common garden ./. plant characteristics, potency and effect] [bottom of page, below plant list] Offt schicken wir aus Unverstand der guten Ding in unserem Garten nach einem Artzt weit über Land, von welchem wir nicht zu gewarten / Pals Loliúm pro Lilio & Apium pro apio. / Peregrina Circumforanei jactane & tesporiuntun præsforibus. / DEUS, Ens Simplicissimum, Creaturas Simpliciores pharmacis cúrat Simplicibus.2 [Because we often don't understand the good things in our garden we often send for a doctor who is far away and from whom we have little to expect. / Ryegrass instead of Lilly, Opium instead of Ivy / Foreign landscapes boasted or borrowed at the markets. / God, the simplest being, cures simpler creatures with simple remedies.] [End Page 340] In this poetic aphorism, he described his medicinal garden as a "common garden"—meaning a shared garden of the greater good. Pastorius wrote about his garden and plants, and he gardened to impart his own knowledge about plants with his Germantown neighbors. Postscript Medicinal Plants listed in Pastorius' Artzney und Kunst (ca. 1686) There are 150 plants listed in this notebook by their German common names. When possible, I have identified the plant by other common names in brackets, its binomial name, and which plants were used by Delaware Native American tribes in Pennsylvania for medicine and food (*). The common names are spelled as Pastorius wrote them...