Havard, Valery (1846–1927). Medical and Economic Botany. Typescript, ca. 1897-98. 1291 numbered leaves on thin laid paper, with holograph emendations throughout. Some photocopied titles laid in, not in the author’s hand. Loose pages housed in an army-issue field binder titled by hand, bound in buckram with straps, titled in manuscript on the cover. Some light wear both to sheets and binder. Now filed in two archival boxes, 1.0 linear feet.

The manuscript for an unpublished masterwork on American flora, written by a pioneering botanist and medical surgeon while serving in the United States army on the western frontier.

Valery Havard in 1880

Trained as a medical doctor in Paris and New York, Valery Havard pursued independent studies in botany. He was appointed to the medical department of the army in 1871 and served in frontier posts in Montana and Texas, where he first came to be interested in native edible plants, the subject of some of his earliest papers. Havard was officially detailed as botanist to expeditions to northwest Texas in 1881 and 1883 led by Captain William R. Livermore, Corps of Engineers. Between 1884 and 1898 he served in a series of posts in New York, North Dakota, and Wyoming, where he continued his studies. 

Valery Havard in 1902

In 1898, Havard was posted to Cuba to serve as chief surgeon of the Cavalry Division under General Joseph Wheeler. He was cited for gallantry in action during the battle of San Juan Hill. In 1901 the Association of Military Surgeons awarded Havard the Enno Sander prize for his work on organizing medical units during active service. Appointed Chief Surgeon of the Department of the East, Havard acted as medical attaché with the Imperial Russian Army during the Russo-Japanese War. From 1906 to 1910 he served as president of the Army Medical School in Washington, D.C. He published in 1908 a book on medical hygiene that was quickly adopted as the standard textbook . 

In 1910, Valery Havard retired to Fairfield, Connecticut (his wife was from Bridgeport), but in 1917 he was recalled to active duty and returned to Cuba to reorganize the medical departments of the country’s army and navy. For this labor he received the Cuban Order of Military Merit. Relieved of this duty in 1923, he settled into a comfortable retirement. He died at sea en route to France in 1927.

Quercus havardii (Photo: William Juett, Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center)

Havard's work in military medicine was vital, but his most lasting contributions may be to the field of botany. In the 1880s and 1890s, he published a series of works on the native flora of Texas that are treasured for their detailed descriptions of the landscape before the introduction of pastoral farming. He sent specimens now preserved in the collections of the United States National Herbarium and the Asa Gray Herbarium at Harvard University, and lent his name to a number of species he described during his time in Texas in the 1870s and early 1880s, including the Chisos bluebonnet (Lupinus havardii), Havard oak (Quercus havardii), and Havard's evening primrose (Oenothera havardii). His ethnobotanical studies, widely cited, were among the first systematic attempts to catalogue the botanical knowledge of North American Indians. 

The present work was the product of an effort initiated at the Pan American Medical Congress of 1896.

The present manuscript represents the union of Havard's parallel vocations. The origins of the work appear to lie in an effort he organized at the second Pan American Medical Congress in 1896 to institute a systematic study of American medicinal flora. He and his colleagues circulated a memorandum soliciting information to compile "a complete list of the plants which have been used medicinally, however trivial such use may be," and requesting that samples be sent to the Smithsonian Institution. Havard's committee singled out the native population as being especially valuable sources for information:

The general reputation of a plant is not so much desired as the particulars ... heard from reliable observers. It is believed that much interesting knowledge can be obtained from Indians, Mexicans, and half-breeds, and that, consequently, Indian agencies and reservations are particularly favorable fields for our investigation (Langley 1897, 414)

This monumental manuscript appears to have been the result of that effort. Weighing in at almost 1300 pages, the work was, according to the author, “the first attempt made in this country to gather all the useful information scattered in American botanical literature … into a convenient and compact form.” Focusing on the spermatophyta (plants bearing flowers and seeds), Havard describes thousands of species, organizing them according to the taxonomic systems of Engler & Prantl’s Pflanzenfamilien and of Britton & Brown’s Illustrated Flora, and using the nomenclature approved by the Botanical Club of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1892 and 1893. It is very much an American text, focusing on species found in the United States with details on their distribution on the continent. Havard draws upon his extensive field research and on Indian lore to remark on the utility of each species as an edible, an ornamental, or a therapeutic. For example, he notes of the variety of Hieracium lachenalia or hawkweed:

They are all bitter and astringent, with ill-defined effect upon the kidneys and bronchial tubes. At least two species have been very highly praised for their efficacy against rattlesnake bites.

But he adds, drawing no doubt again on his experience:

In estimating the value of our numerous “snake-weeds” we should bear in mind that the average adult, if in fair health and not over-stimulated with whiskey, almost always recovers from a rattlesnake bite without treatment.

Havard's preface to the manuscript notes that his work was intended to appeal to a wide class of readers, including physicians, pharmacists, organic chemists, farmers, lumbermen, landscape architects, and “the large class of educated people who study botany for pleasure and recreation.”

Long lost, this manuscript will allow historians of science to more fully appreciate Havard's considerable contributions to American botany and assess the formation of medical knowledge at the turn of the Pan-American century

Select References

Havard, Valery. "Botanical outlines of the country marched over by the seventh United States Cavalry during the summer of 1877." Annual report of the chief of engineers to the Secretary of War for the year 1877, Appendix QQ, pp. 1681-1687

-----. List of plants found on the plains of western Dakota and eastern Montana during the summer of 1877 and spring of 1879. Washington : Government Printing Office, 1880.

-----. "The Mezquit." American naturalist, May, 1884.

-----. "Report on the flora of western and southern Texas, United States." National museum. Proceedings, 8 (1885): 449-533.

-----. "Distribution of the Buffalo Grass (Buchloe Dactyloides, Engelm.)." Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club, 15, no. 8 (1888): 215–18.

-----. Manual of drill for the hospital corps and company bearers of the U. S. Army. Bismark, Dakota: Tribune, 1889.

-----. "Food plants of the North American Indians." Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club, 22/3 (1895): 98-123

-----. "Drink plants of the North American Indians." Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club, 23/2 (1896): 33-46

-----. "Notes on trees of Cuba." The Plant World 4, no. 10 (1901): 181–85, 181-185, 221-225.

-----.  Reports of Military Observers Attached to the Armies in Manchuria During the Russo-Japanese War, Part II: Washington, DC: GPO, 1906.

-----. Manual of Military hygiene for the military services of the United States. New York: Wood, 1908.

-----. "Personal recollections and military record of Colonel Valery Havard, Medical Corps, U.S. Army." Asa Gray Bulletin N.S. 3/2 (spring 1957): 177-92.

-----. [Portrait] in L. R. Hamersly, ed. A military album, containing over one thousand portraits of commissioned officers who served in the Spanish-American war (New York: L. R. Hamersly, 1902), 243.

Langley, S. P., H. H. Rusby, and Valery Havard. "Circular of the Sub-Commission of the Pan-American Medical Congress on Medicinal Flora of the United States."Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club 24, no. 8 (1897): 413–15.

Phalen, James M. "Valery Havard, Colonel, Medical Corps, U.S. Army." Army Medical Bulletin, 50 (Oct. 1939): 126-129