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The doctrine of signatures, dating from the time of Dioscurides and Galen, states that herbs that resemble various parts of the body can be used by herbalists to treat ailments of those parts of the body. A theological justification for this, as stated by botanists like William Coles, was that God would have wanted to show men what plants would be useful for. == History == Paracelsus (1491–1541) developed the concept, writing that "Nature marks each growth ... according to its curative benefit",〔 and it was followed by Giambattista della Porta in his ''Phytognomonica'' (1588). The writings of Jakob Böhme (1575–1624) spread the doctrine of signatures. He suggested that God marked objects with a sign, or "signature", for their purpose. Plants bearing parts that resembled human body-parts, animals, or other objects were thought to have useful relevance to those parts, animals or objects. The "signature" could sometimes also be identified in the environments or specific sites in which plants grew. Böhme's 1621 book ''The Signature of All Things'' gave its name to the doctrine.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Doctrine of Signatures )〕 The botanist William Coles (1626–1662) supposed that God had made 'Herbes for the use of men, and hath given them particular Signatures, whereby a man may read ... the use of them.'〔 Coles's ''The Art of Simpling'' and ''Adam in Eden'', stated that walnuts were good for curing head ailments because in his opinion, "they Have the perfect Signatures of the Head". Regarding ''Hypericum'', he wrote, "The little holes whereof the leaves of Saint Johns wort are full, doe resemble all the pores of the skin and therefore it is profitable for all hurts and wounds that can happen thereunto."〔 A theological justification was made for this philosophy: "It was reasoned that the Almighty must have set his sign upon the various means of curing disease which he provided". For the late medieval viewer, the natural world was vibrant with images of the Deity: 'as above, so below,' a Hermetic principle expressed as the relationship between macrocosm and microcosm; the principle is rendered ''sicut in terra''. Michel Foucault expressed the wider usage of the doctrine of signatures, which rendered allegory more real and more cogent than it appears to a modern eye: 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「doctrine of signatures」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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