Physician and traveller John (or Johann) Honigberger was born in Krostadt (now Brasov) in Transylvania. He studied medicine and afterwards earned a good reputation as a physician during travels in Europe and the Middle East. In 1815 he went to Constantinople (Istanbul) and two years later visited Jerusalem, going on to travel east through the Levant, Egypt, Arabia and Persia as a government physician.
Reaching India in 1829, Honigberger settled at Lahore in the Punjab (Pakistan). Here he treated East India Company soldiers and served as court physician to the Maharaja Ranjit Singh. He also collected plants and compiled a materia medica of his discoveries. A student of homeopathy, he is said to be responsible for its introduction to Asia, and used homeopathic preparations to cure the Maharajah's paralysed vocal chords.
In Chapters on the History of Indian Botany, I.H. Burkill credits Honigberger with the first botanical collections to be made in Afghanistan, undertaken on a journey in 1833. As Ralph Stewart remarks, however, Burkill must have been mistaken in not also crediting to him the first collections in the Punjab (which Burkill says were made by Victor Jaccquemont): Honigberger must have collected plants at around the same time, or before, Jacquemont.
Honigberger took a dangerous and unusual route back to Europe in 1834, following the road across the Sulaiman Range from the Indus into Afghanistan, through Kabul and on to the Oxus. He suffered from the harsh conditions and hazards on the way, losing a horse to the searing heat and several camels to thieves. He was robbed again at Bamyan, north of Kabul, but eventually made it through Russia to reach Europe once more.
After visiting Paris and Vienna Honigberger settled in Constantinople, but at the invitation of the Punjabi Maharaja he returned to Lahore in 1839. The majority of his botanical collecting in Kashmir would have been done in 1849, after the British victory over the Sikhs.
Honigberger described his experiences and findings in a two-volume account entitled Thirty-five years in the East. Discoveries and sketches relating to the Punjab and Cashmere in connection with medicine, botany, &c. (1852).
Sources:
M. Alam, 2009, "Plant Collectors in Afghanistan", Bulletin de la Société vaudoise des Sciences naturelles, 91(3): 302, 305
I.H. Burkill, 1965, Chapters on the History of Indian Botany
R.R. Stewart, 1979, "The First Plant Collectors in Kashmir and the Punjab", Taxon, 28: 9-10.
