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HILL John - England - 1716 - 1795

HILL John Hill was an English pharmacist and physician of primary importance to the Anglo-Saxon botanical world. His cultural training in the art of pharmacy and medicine did not stop him from writing and reciting comedies and from engaging in various types of literary activity, for which he eventually won membership in the Swedish Vasa order. But his passion for plants and their derivatives led him to collect much material that he used in the publication of numerous treatises. As a result of his mastery of horticulture he became the director of the Royal Botanical Gardens of London and a designer of many others.

Main work: The British Herball, London 1756.

Botanical interests: His primary objective seemed to be that of providing information on the virtues of plants. His works had the goal of educating those who lived in the country and in the city on the use and cultivation of herbs. He personally and faithfully drew the plants for his publications which came out in installments. He also took a deeper and more technical interest, writing a worthy herbal in Latin for physicians. Among his principal works are: The Vegetable System (1764), The British Herbal (1756), Herbarium Britannicum (1769), Exotic Botany (1772), Eden (gardening) (1757).