Mycology the classical authors. The start of the modern age of mycology begins with Pier Antonio Micheli's 1737 publication of "Nova plantarum genera". Published in Florence, this seminal work laid the foundations for the systematic classification of grasses, mosses and fungi. The term "mycology" and the complementary "mycologist" were first used in 1836 by M.J. Berkeley. For centuries, certain mushrooms have been documented as a folk medicine in China, Japan, and Russia. Although the use of mushrooms in folk medicine is centered largely on the Asian continent, people in other parts of the world like the Middle East, Poland, and Belarus
History of biology study of animals and plants. "Natural history" referred to the descriptive aspects of biology, though it also included mineralogy and other non-biological fields; from the Middle Ages through the Renaissance, the unifying framework of natural history was the "scala naturae" or Great Chain of Being. "Natural philosophy" and "natural theology" encompassed the conceptual and metaphysical basis of plant and animal life, dealing with problems of why organisms exist and behave the way they do, though these subjects also included what is now geology, physics, chemistry, and astronomy. Physiology and (botanical) pharmacology were the province of medicine. "Botany", "zoology", and (in