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The Vernal WordSpring! In spring's first hour the sun transits the celestial equator to signal the vernal equinox, a day half daylight and half night that is the advent of springtime. The Latin adjective vernalis ‘in springtime’ derives from an earlier adjective vernus ‘in spring’ from a Latin noun ver, veris ‘spring’ cognate with ancient Greek ear ‘spring’, possibly cognate with Hebrew aor ‘light, sun’; but certainly cognate with Old Norse var ‘spring’, Sanskrit वसर् vasar , ‘morning ’ and वसन्त vasantá ‘spring ’ , Old Persian vahar, Old Armenian garun ‘spring’ and Old Church Slavonic вєсна vesna ‘spring’, all stemming from a Proto-Indo-European root *wesr’ ‘spring.’ Equinox is Latin aequus ‘level’ or ‘equal’ + Latin nox, noctis ‘night.’
“Is Thy Name Wort?” Why is a Plant Named St. John’s Wort? With the etymology of a flower name, St. John’s Wort, shall we celebrate spring. Its very name is a demonstration of how powerful an erroneous folk etymology can be. Wort as an Ending of Flower Names First we’ll do some etymological spade work in the loam of Old English on that intriguing wort that subtends so many old English plant names: birthwort, liverwort, lousewort, lungwort, pennywort, pepperwort and sneezewort. The Oxford English Dictionary lists hundreds of common “–wort” names for flowers. The Old English word for root or any plant, herb or veggie useful as food or medicine was wyrt, Germanic relative of the modern German noun Wurz ‘root’ and related to the Scandinavian word urt for ‘root. Wort is related to our word root, to Old Norse rot, to Latin radix, to Greek rhiza, all meaning ‘root of a plant.’
Hypericum & Botanical Name Sources The Scientific Latin name of St. John’s Wort, that is, the genus name, is Hypericum. In Greek it was hypereikos or in a later spelling by Dioscorides and Galen, two famous Greek-born doctors of imperial Rome hyperikon. See my short biography of Galen at the end of this column. The first Greek form appears to contain the Greek word for heath or heather, ereike, preceded by hyper Greek ‘above,’ ‘over,’ ‘super’. Thus the prime meaning may be growing ‘above or through the heath plant.’ But the second root could also be eikon Greek ‘picture, image’ from which current English derived icon, holy image of a saint or deity. This derivation was widely believed by early Christians, hence the habit of hanging a sprig of St. John’s Wort above holy images, particularly above icons depicting saints on their feast days. Get Thee Way Behind Me, Satan! Yet another meaning of eikon produced yet another use of this plant. A common secondary meaning of eikon in ancient Greek was ‘ghost, phastasm, ethereal spirit.’ Hyper means ‘over’ in Greek; thence a folk belief developed that hyperikon meant ‘over a ghost’ and so the herb would keep away “ghoulies and ghosties and things that go bump! in the night.” Now the leaves of St. John’s Wort have little oil glands that give them a dotted look.
Folk superstition said that the devil was so angry about St. John’s Wort driving off his evil minions that he pierced the leaves with these dots in a fit of satanic pique. From the immemorial past, Midsummer’s Eve was a night when witches, goblins and volant sprites took flight and flapped on leathern wing or slithery broom to do nefarious deeds.
Source of Common English Name Midsummer Eve is the night of June 24, called Walpurgisnacht in German. Saints’ icons were protected on this night by hanging St. John’s Wort over them. This is also the origin of the English common name, for in the calendar of saints, the feast of St. John the Baptist is June 24, a date on which the plant was supposed to be in bloom. Another wisp of herbal folklore said that dew falling on the plant overnight could be collected on the morning of June 24 and rubbed on the eyes, which would safeguard one’s peepers from disease. St. John’s Wort is a Long-Time Favorite of Herbalists Elizabethan gardener and famous writer on plants, John Gerard,in his The Herball, or General Historie of Plants published in 1597 waxes positively ecstatic about the virtues of St. John’s Wort. With modern caution in mind, we quote a smidgeon: “S. Johns wort with his floures and seed boyled and drunken, provoketh urine, and is right good against the stone in the bladder, and stoppeth the laske [diarrhea]. The leaves stamped are good to be layd upon burnings, scaldings, and all wounds; and also for rotten and filthy ulcers. The leaves, floures, and seeds stamped, and put into a glasse with oyle Olive, and set in the hot Sunne for certain weeks together, and then strained from those herbs, and the like quantitie of new put in, and sunned in like manner, doth make an oyle of the colour of bloud, which is a most precious remedy for deepe wounds, and those that are thorow the body, for sinews that are prickt, or any wound made with a venomed weapon.”
Species Native to British Columbia and possible to use there as a pleasant groundcover is Hypericum anagalloides (Botanical Latin, like Scarlet Pimpernel or Anagallis, said of the tiny leaves). A noxious, introduced weed in much of southern Canada is Hypericum perforatum (Latin, with holes through it, said of the apparent holes in the surface of the leaf and at the edge of the petal, in fact these dots are the transparent oil glands). Light-colored animals may be poisoned by some of the glucosides in the plant. They are phototropic, being turned by light into toxic nasties. The most common garden subject, also good for groundcovers in mild climates, is Hypericum moserianum hybridized by a botanist named Moser. Called Goldflower, it blooms in one of nature’s prettiest yellow hues. Another common name of a related St. John’s Wort species is Aaron’s Beard. Some botanists state that St. John’s Wort belongs to its own plant family Hypericaceae, a family of about eight genera and 350 species, more than 300 being Hypericum species. About 50 of these are native to North America.
Galen: One of History’s Most Influential Doctors Galen Γαληνός ‘Galēnos’ (129 CE – 199 CE) was a gifted doctor who was court physician to the Roman emperor and philosopher Marcus Aurelius, and to his successor emperors Commodus and Septimus Severus. Galen’s writings, in a pure, clear and serene Attic Greek, influenced daily medical practice for more than 1,000 years. Some of Galen’s Greek medical terms are still alive in the international language of Western medicine, words like hematopoietic are in use today, although with different meanings. Roman law made the dissection of human corpses punishable by death. Although they advanced prodigiously in many fields of human endeavour there is a crude core of Roman beliefs that belong to an ignorant Italian peasant tradition stretching back to a time when, before conquering the world, Romans were tending goats and worshipping thunderstorms. To this era belongs their fastidious reserve about autopsy and vivisection. Thus Galen throughout his medical training had to dissect pigs and monkeys. He made many good discoveries about human anatomy but there are bits and pieces found in pigs and monkeys that Galen placed inside humans in his anatomical theories. In fact, ancient physicians had to hurry to battle scenes the day after the victory to study soldiers’ corpses freshly dead on the field. It was not illegal Galen’s anatomical studies were not surpassed until 1543 when Andreas Vesalius published his illustrations of anatomy. Vesalius of course could perform post mortem autopsies on cadavers, which Galen could not do. Galen’s theories on the circulation of blood, though wrong, endured until 1628 when William Harvey showed that blood circulated, pumped through veins and arteries by the great muscle bag of the heart. One of the insights Galen bequeathed to the practice of medicine was direct observation wherever possible, after or rather than, merely reading about a disease or lesion. Galen was also the authority on wounds and their healing.
The surviving Greek and translations of Galen’s work amount to more than 3,000,000 words. Although his eternal fame came long after his death, even in his lifetime, Galen received his just guerdon of renown. One of the greatest Roman philosophers and an emperor, Marcus Aurelius, wrote of Galen that he was “primum sane medicorum esse, philosophorum autem solum” ‘a clear first among doctors and, given that, unique among philosophers too.’ Galen’s influence was twofold. A collective noun arose, Galenism, that was both laudatory and insulting. His theories and practical clinical instruction were so pervasive and influential that for centuries Galenic medicine thwarted all experimentation and stifled medical progress. Too many doctors said that if it was in Galen it was the truth and there was no need to challenge it. Today we recognize that a challenge to orthodoxy is perhaps the prime duty of the true scientist.
copyright © 2012 William Gordon Casselman
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to gently lift the lungs out of a sliced-open soldier. When he was 28 years old, Galen got himself appointed as chief surgeon to the gladiatorial school of his hometown, 
Pergamum. For another method of studying the innards of the human body was the care and therapy of horrible gaping wounds in the bodies of barely living men clawed open by lions and pierced by spears with skulls cracked by iron balls during gladiatorial combat. 
