An Interactive Annotated World Bibliography of Printed and Digital Works in the History of Medicine and the Life Sciences from Circa 2000 BCE to 2022 by Fielding H. Garrison (1870-1935), Leslie T. Morton (1907-2004), and Jeremy M. Norman (1945- ) Traditionally Known as “Garrison-Morton”

15961 entries, 13944 authors and 1935 subjects. Updated: March 22, 2024

HILL, (Sir) John

2 entries
  • 10227

The vegetable system. Or, the internal structure and the life of plants; their parts, and nourishment explained; their classes, orders, genera, and species, ascertained, and described; in a method altogether new: Comprehending an artificial index and a natural system. With figures of all plants designed and engraved by the author. The whole from nature only. 26 vols.

London: For the Author, 17591775.

This very extensive work consisting of 26 vols. in folio, with a total of 1548 plates, was the first comprehensive vernacular presentation of botany adopting Linnean generic names and binary nomenclature. It describes and illustrates about 26,000 plants. "The first volume (1759) is still in the old [i.e. pre-Linnaean] style, but from the second volume onward ... Linnaean binomials are used, although the sexual system is not followed ... Volume 5 contains 'observations on a natural method, so far as it regards the connection of the classes.' Hill's natural system was well worth studying but his voice remained unheard ... Hill was perhaps erratic and unconvincing ... but he was one of the first to rebel against Linnaeus's artificial system and essentialist classification" (F.A. Stafleu Linnaeus and the Linnaeans, Utrecht: 1971, p. 210)



Subjects: BOTANY, BOTANY › Classification / Systemization of Plants
  • 2607.1

Cautions against the immoderate use of snuff. Founded on the known qualities of the tobacco Plant; and the effects it must produce when this way taken Into the body: And by instances of persons who have perished miserably of diseases, occasioned, or rendered incurable by its use,

London: R. Baldwin & J. Jackson, 1761.

First clinical report (pp. 30-31) of an association between tobacco and cancer, in this case “polypusses” of the nose caused by taking snuff. Hill was a distinguished botanist and apothecary, although regarded by some as a quack. See D.E. Redmond, Jr., Tobacco and cancer: the first clinical report. New Eng. J. Med., (1970), 282, 18-23.

Digital facsimile of the second edition, also published in 1761, from the Internet Archive at this link.



Subjects: ONCOLOGY & CANCER, PHARMACOLOGY › PHARMACEUTICALS › Botanic Sources of Single Component Drugs › Tobacco, TOXICOLOGY › Drug Addiction › Tobacco