Time for another book review! Plants That Cure is a reference book that showed up on our doorstep around Valentine’s Day (thanks, boyfriend, and thanks Princeton University Press book sales! 😉 ). I don’t think I can sum it up much better than its own introduction, written by authors Dauncey and Howes:
“Of the approximately 383,000 plants known worldwide, at least seven per cent have been used as traditional remedies. Modern science has proved the usefulness of many of those plants. This book introduces those plants from which isolated constituents have been developed as important pharmaceutical drugs, and other plants that are now widely available as herbal or dietary supplements with increasing evidence to support their use.”
Dauncey and Howes, p 8
A little wordy, I know. The tone of the whole book is like that–a bit stiff and scientific. (Well, one of the authors is a pharmacist after all, and the other is a toxicologist!) However, that comes in handy when the authors discuss esoteric topics in botanical science and history. Everything is very carefully explained!
After the introduction and a nice, brief overview of plant use throughout human history, the authors arranged the chapters by ailment. There’s a chapter on plants that aid the nervous system, for example, and one on the heart, the stomach, and so on. Within each chapter, you can find plant profiles complete with notes on history, chemical composition and how the cures work, and an array of helpful pictures. At the end there’s a glossary and, my favorite part, an extensive index (very helpful for last minute fact-checks!).
My edition of Plants That Cure is a beautiful hardcover, a perfect “coffee table book” full of interesting tidbits. Because of its comprehensive information–a combination of chemistry, botany, and some folklore–the book is a great example of the way plants intertwine with our lives (pun intended, haha). In my opinion, it’s a worthy present–and you’ll certainly be seeing it cited on the blog in the future! 🙂
Full Citation
Below you’ll find the official Chicago-style citation for the book (because once a historian, always a historian, haha). We found our copy in an online book sale; if you like nonfiction books, beware Princeton’s flash sales!
Dauncey, Elizabeth A, and Melanie-Jayne R Howes. Plants That Cure: Plants as a Source for Medicines, from Pharmaceuticals to Herbal Remedies. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2020.
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