チャールズ・シンガーはイギリスで生まれたユダヤ人。父親はユダヤ教の律法博士（ラビ）で、シンガーは医学を学んだ。彼が本草学の歴史について書いた1920年代の論考、特に偽アプレイウスの本草学に関する言及を読み、いいセリフを引用することができた。ついでに、シンガーがイギリス科学史学会の初代の会長であったことを利用した論文も読むことができた。
Cantor, Geoffrey. "Presidential Address: Charles Singer and the Early Years of the British Society for the History of Science." The British Journal for the History of Science, vol. 30, no. 1, 1997, pp. 5-23, JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org.kras1.lib.keio.ac.jp/stable/4027896.
Singer, Charles. "The Herbal in Antiquity and Its Transmission to Later Ages." The Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. 47, 1927, pp. 1-52, JSTOR, doi:10.2307/625251.
"herbals are quite devoid of any rational basis. author makes a direct attack on diseases, without any nonsense about theories. the herbal is thus to be distinguished from the scientific botanical treatise by the fact that its aims are exclusively "practical" -- a vague and foolish word with which, men have sought to conceal from themselves and from others their destitution of anything in the nature of general ideas."
"a herbal is primarily a descriptive drug-list or, as we now call it, a pharamacopoeia."
