The mandrake may have become just another botanical specimen, but its mystic past still holds an intoxicating allure. Stripped of the enchanting imagery and mythology found in herbals, references to the mandrake in 19th-century pharmacopoeias were sadly diminished. Once chemists could create these substances in the laboratory, they no longer needed to identify plants or prepare drugs from source, and plant lore became redundant. The alkaloids are a family of potent chemicals, still widely used in pharmaceuticals and responsible for the hallucinogenic and sedative (and toxic) effects of many other plants, including deadly nightshade. In 1889, the active chemical in the mandrake plant was isolated and identified as mandragorine, later confirmed as a mix of alkaloids. Photo courtesy Biodiversity Heritage Library, Creative Commons Both present and future applications are dealt with in this context.Herbier General de l’Amateur, Paris journal 1828-1835. The frontend – the future public portal to Anglo-Saxon plant names – is heavily ‘under construction’: some features are already implemented, the majority, though, is still a bunch of wild ideas. It is meant to give people normally not involved in technical matters a basic understanding of database theory. This sums up the technical groundwork of the backend of our web application. We also want to give a thorough report on the design process that spawned the sql-database which is the solid foundation of the dictionary: there will be an excursus into database and web design theory, a detailed description of the database in relation to its contents, and on techniques for data input and retrieval. The three volumes of Der botanische Wortschatz des Altenglischen had to be digitalised: this paper provides a glimpse at how it was done and which problems were encountered. Our intentions are to update it not only with regard to scientific research but also in technical aspects. The fwf-funded project ‘Dictionary of Old English Plant Names‘ is based on the work on this subject carried out by Peter Bierbaumer in the late 1970′s. Ultimately the website should provide detailed monographs and bibliographies, latin and vernacular name databases, etc. linguistics, literary studies, classical philology, medical and pharmaceutical history, theology, etc.) an online platform is needed to bring together the information provided by various researchers in the form of commentaries, references, or miscellanea. Since the study of plants of the middle ages is conducted in various fields of research (i.e. We intend the 'Medieval Plant Survey / Portal der Pflanzen des Mittelalters' to be a web portal based on the principles and technology of Web 2.0. Collaboration as well as data exchange could be intensified and the scientific workflow could be streamlined and optimized. Tackling those problems would be an enormous benefit for the scientific community. The latter two are worsened by the imbalance of prestigiousness between online and printed publications. They cover technical problems and human resources, and – analyzed from a psychological point of view – motivational aspects and non-material rewards. But most scientific web appearances are reluctant to make use of this new development. With the emergence of Web 2.0 – this is a new way of designing, developing, and using software online, its applications try to encourage user interaction as well as user generated content – networking has reached a new peak. The triumphant advance of the internet has brought a broad range of sophisticated websites, and medievalists have become connected world wide. Within the humanities medieval studies have a long standing history of employing the use of information technologies for research: databases, text archives, and analyzing software have always proved useful. In fact, more research is needed to pinpoint when and where various elements of the legend originated and how (and how far) they spread, especially for the time after the 12th century. Our findings bring an important corrective to many folkloristic assumptions about the mandrake legend that have been handed down and accepted at face value for years. We base our research strictly on historical documents (illustrations, literary and botanical/pharmaceutical texts) carefully correlated in time. 500 to 1500, showing that not all concepts we know today were associated with the plant at any given time or place in the past. Our paper stresses the importance of distinguishing different stages in the mandrake legend in the centuries from ca. A major misconception about the Middle Ages and the era directly preceding it is an assumption that the different elements of the mandrake legend were always widespread and well-known. This paper demonstrates how the contemporary legend about mandrake plant evolved from classical through early-modern times.
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