(archaic) One who grows or gathers simples (medicinal herbs).
1781, Daines Barrington, Miscellanies, Essay VII, On the Linnæan System, page 273:One of the great pleasures in botany is, to produce a rather uncommon plant to those who know it to be curious; but the English botanist will not have much satisfaction in shewing it to a simpler, who is not acquainted with it under the name given by Gerard or Ray.
1833, William Hogarth, Anecdotes of William Hogarth: written by himself, page 48:… may with no great impropriety be termed going a simpling; but with this special difference, that your field simpler never picks up a nettle for a marsh-mallow; a mistake which your tour simpler is very liable to.
