author
Daniel Hanbury
1825–1875
A leading 19th-century expert on medicinal plants, he combined business experience, botanical curiosity, and wide-ranging travel to help shape the study of pharmacognosy. His work is still remembered through classic references on vegetable drugs and materia medica.
1 Audiobook
Pharmacographia A history of the principal drugs of vegetable origin, met with in Great Britain and British India
by Friedrich A. (Friedrich August) Flückiger, Daniel Hanbury
About the author
Born in London on September 11, 1825, into a Quaker family connected with the well-known firm Allen & Hanburys, he entered the family business while developing a deep interest in botany and pharmacy. He later qualified as a pharmaceutical chemist and became especially interested in pharmacognosy, the study of natural drugs, particularly those derived from plants.
He built his reputation through careful research, correspondence, and travel, collecting and comparing medicinal specimens from many regions. Contemporary accounts describe him as a familiar figure in the Royal and Linnean Societies, and later summaries credit him as one of the leading specialists of his time in vegetable drugs and Chinese materia medica.
His best-known legacy is the influential reference work Pharmacographia, written with Friedrich August Flückiger, along with many scientific papers on botanical and pharmacological subjects. He died on March 24, 1875, at the age of 49.