Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure | Page 3

can be amended, and its omissions supplied: fresh clauses can be introduced: and the whole scheme of the Bill can be better adapted to the spirit of the House inferred from its first reception.
In somewhat similar fashion the Second Edition of "Herbal Simples" is now submitted to a Parliament of readers with the belief that its ultimate success, or failure of purpose, is to depend on its present revised contents, and the amplified scope of its chapters.
The criticism which public journalists, not a few, thought proper to pass on its First Edition have been attentively considered herein. It is true their comments were in some cases so conflicting as to be difficult of practical appliance. The fabled old man and his ass stand always in traditional warning against futile attempts to satisfy inconsistent objectors, or to carry into effect suggestions made by irreconcilable censors. "Quot homines, tot [xiv] sententioe," is an adage signally verified when a fresh venture is made on the waters of chartered opinion. How shall the perplexed navigator steer his course when monitors in office accuse him on the one hand of lax precision throughout, and belaud him on the other for careful observance of detail? Or how shall he trim his sails when a contemptuous Standard-bearer, strangely uninformed on the point, ignores, as a leader of any repute, "one Gerard," a former famous Captain of the Herbal fleet? With the would-be Spectator's lament that Gerard's graphic drawings are regrettedly wanting here, the author is fain to concur. He feels that the absence of appropriate cuts to depict the various herbs is quite a deficiency: but the hope is inspired that a still future Edition may serve to supply this need. Certain botanical mistakes pointed out with authority by the Pharmaceutical Journal have here been duly corrected: and as many as fifty additional Simples will be found described in the present Enlarged Edition. At the same time a higher claim than hitherto made for the paramount importance of the whole subject is now courageously advanced.
To all who accept as literal truth the Scriptural account of the Garden of Eden it must be evident how intimately man's welfare from the first was made to depend on his uses of trees and herbs. The labour of earning his bread in the sweat of his brow by tilling the ground: and the penalty of [xv] and thistles produced thereupon, were alike incurred by Eve's disobedience in plucking the forbidden fruit: and a signified possibility of man's eventful share in the tree of life, to "put forth his hand, and eat, and live for ever," has been more than vaguely revealed. So that with almost a sacred mission, and with an exalted motive of supreme usefulness, this Manual of healing Herbs is published anew, to reach, it is hoped, and to rescue many an ailing mortal.
Against its main principle an objection has been speciously raised, which at first sight appears of subversive weight; though, when further examined, it is found to be clearly fallacious. By an able but carping critic it was alleged that the mere chemical analysis of old-fashioned Herbal Simples makes their medicinal actions no less empirical than before: and that a pedantic knowledge of their constituent parts, invested with fine technical names, gives them no more scientific a position than that which our fathers understood.
But, taking, for instance, the herb Rue, which was formerly brought into Court to protect a and the Bench from gaol fever, and other infectious disease; no one knew at the time by what particular virtue the Rue could exercise this salutary power. But more recent research has taught, that the essential oil contained in this, and other allied aromatic herbs, such as Elecampane, [xvi] Rosemary, and Cinnamon, serves by its germicidal principles (stearoptens, methyl-ethers, and camphors), to extinguish bacterial life which underlies all contagion. In a parallel way the antiseptic diffusible oils of Pine, Peppermint, and Thyme, are likewise employed with marked success for inhalation into the lungs by consumptive patients. Their volatile vapours reach remote parts of the diseased air-passages, and heal by destroying the morbid germs which perpetuate mischief therein. It need scarcely be said the very existence of these causative microbes, much less any mode of cure by their abolishment, was quite unknown to former Herbal Simplers.
Again, in past times a large number of our native, plants acquired a well-deserved, but purely empirical celebrity, for curing scrofula and scurvy. But later discovery has shown that each of these several herbs contains lime, and earthy salts, in a subtle form of high natural sub-division: whilst, at the same time, the law of cure by medicinal similars has established the cognate fact that to those who inherit a strumous taint, infinitesimal doses of these earth salts are incontestably curative. The parents had