The definition of “wort” includes “used in names of plants and herbs, especially those used, especially formerly, as food or medicinally, e.g., butterwort, woundwort” ... so it sounds likely that some English speaking culture already realized that liverwort had medicinal value. (C.f. St John’s Wort, an herb with some evidence of antidepressant effects.)
I can’t stress enough just how nominal their commitment to science is these days. An elderly relative bought me many years subscription to SciAm and it’s mostly useful as toilet roll. You get the occasional scholarly article, but the majority is either “science writers” gushing over something they don’t understand, or thinly veiled politics. Hell, I agree with most of their political leanings, but I’m not interested in reading them from that source.
It’s sad, but the majority of science in Scientific American is in the name.
Yes, I stopped reading it regularly about 20 years ago. They got a new editorial board and went for a broader audience by diluting the content drastically in both quality and quantity. The final straw for me was when they adjusted the font size and spacing to reduce the amount of text by about 10% while maintaining page count.
Their transition from hard science to popularizing science was a deliberate response to the anti-intellectual tide. At the time, it felt like a loss, but I understood the motivation and supported their goals. Sadly, I don't know that their efforts have moved the needle.
That seems like exactly the wrong approach. Reading the old SciAm was an afternoon of hard mental work each month but I thought of it as cheap education, hitting a sweet spot between solid content and accessibility/cost compared to journals. Cannot help seeing this as a strategic own goal.
