arnica

Note: The genus Arnica was introduced by linnaeus in Species plantarum, vol. 2 (Stockholm, 1753), p. 884. Linnaeus cites as his source for the name Albrecht von Haller's Enumeratio methodica stirpium Helvetiae indigenarum, tomus II (Göttingen, 1742), p. 737. Haller in turn cites the essay "De Arnica Lapsorum Panacea" by the German physician Johann Michael Fehr (1610-88), which appeared in Miscellanea curiosa, sive Ephemeridum medico-physicarum Germanicarum Academiæ naturæ curiosorum, Annus nonus et decimus (1678-79, printed 1680), pp. 22-30. (The Academia naturae curiosorum ["Academy of those curious about nature"], later the Leopoldina after its patron the emperor Leopold I, and the German National Academy of Sciences since 2008, is the oldest academic society in German-speaking Europe.) Fehr appears to have been the first physician to have discussed the medical uses of arnica under this name, which he thought may have been distorted from the earlier name ptarmica "by some ignorant root-cutter, as it possesses the remarkable power of inducing sneezes": "Vox arnica ex ptarmica mihi corrupta esse videtur ab imperito quodam rhizotomo, quod insignis ipsi insit vis sternutatoria." (Ptarmica, going back to Greek ptarmikós "causing a sneeze," has been applied since Dioscorides and Galen to various flowering plants thought to induce sneezing, as Achillea ptarmica.) Prior to Johann Michael Fehr, evidence for the name arnica is very sparse. It appears in a posthumous edition (Frankfurt am Main, 1613) of the herbal Neuw Vollkommentlich Kreuterbuch by the physician and botanist Jacobus Theodorus Tabernaemontanus (Jakob Diether von Bergzabern, ca. 1522-1590), as an alternate name of the plant called Mutterwurtz in German and Caltha alpina in Latin (p. 48): "Bey den Sachsen und Seestätten wird es Woluelen geheissen bei dem gemeinen Mann : aber von den Medicis Arnica." ("Among the Saxons and in coastal locales it is called Woluelen by the common man, but by the doctors Arnica.") The name, however, seems to be lacking in the original edition of Tabernaemontanus's opus (Neuw Kreuterbuch, Frankfurt am Main, 1588). According to Gustav Hegi, Illustrierte Flora von Mittel-Europa, 6. Band, 1. Hälfte (Munich, 1918?), arnica is first found in the form arnich in the Liber pandectarum medicinae of Matthaeus Sylvaticus (ca. 1280-ca. 1342). The word does indeed appear in an early printed edition (Venice, 1498), but with the description "herba iamena boni odoris similis cinnamomo grosso" ("herb of Yemen with a good odor, resembling a coarse cinnamon"). This would seem to have no connection with Arnica montana, and, in fact, this passage is taken verbatim from a longer description in the herbalist dictionary Clavis sanationis by Simon of Genoa (active late 13th century), who calls the herb armech rather than arnich (see the website "Simon Online" at simonofgenoa.org). The identity of armech is undetermined.