Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure | Page 9

neuralgic or rheumatic stitch occurring in the side
from any other cause.
And so with respect to the Wild Pansy (Viola tricolor), we read in
Hahnemann's commentary on the proved plant: "The Pansy Violet
excites certain cutaneous eruptions about the head and face, a hard
thick scab being formed, which is cracked here and there, and [6] from

which a tenacious yellow matter exudes, and hardens into a substance
like gum." This is an accurate picture of the diseased state seen often
affecting the scalp of unhealthy children, as milk-crust, or, when
aggravated, as a disfiguring eczema, and concerning the same Dr.
Hughes of Brighton, in his authoritative modern treatise, says, "I have
rarely needed any other medicine than the Viola tricolor for curing
milk-crust, which is the plague of children," and "I have given it in the
adult for recent impetigo (a similar disease of the skin), with very
satisfactory results."
Finally, the Sundew (Drosera rotundifolia), which is a common little
plant growing on our bogs, and marshy places, is found to act in the
same double fashion of cause or cure according to the quantity taken, or
administered. Farmers well know that this small herb when devoured
by sheep in their pasturage will bring about a violent chronic cough,
with waste of substance: whilst the Sundew when given experimentally
to cats has been found to stud the surface of their lungs with morbid
tubercular matter, though this is a form of disease to which cats are not
otherwise liable. In like manner healthy human provers have become
hoarse of voice through taking the plant, and troubled with a severe
cough, accompanied with the expectoration of abundant yellow mucus,
just as in tubercular mischief beginning at the windpipe. Meantime it
has been well demonstrated (by Dr. Curie, and others) that at the onset
of pulmonary consumption in the human subject a cure may nearly
always be brought about, or the symptoms materially improved, by
giving the tincture of Sundew throughout several weeks--from four to
twenty drops in the twenty-four hours. And it has further become an
established fact that the same tincture [7] will serve with remarkable
success to allay the troublesome spasms of Whooping Cough in its
second stage, if given in small doses, repeated several times a day.
From these several examples, therefore, which are easy to be
understood, we may fairly conclude that positive remedial actions are
equally exercised by other Herbal Simples, both because of their
chemical constituents and by reason of their curing in many cases
according to the known law of medicinal correspondence.

Until of late no such an assured position could be rightly claimed by
our native herbs, though pretentions in their favour have been widely
popular since early English times. Indeed, Herbal physic has engaged
the attention of many authors from the primitive days of Dioscorides
(A.D. 60) to those of Elizabethan Gerard, whose exhaustive and
delightful volume published in 1587 has remained ever since in
paramount favour with the English people. Its quaint fascinating style,
and its queer astrological notions, together with its admirable woodcuts
of the plants described, have combined to make this comprehensive
Herbal a standing favourite even to the present day.
Gerard had a large physic-garden near his house in Old Bourne
(Holborn), and there is in the British Museum a letter drawn up by his
hand asking Lord Burghley, his patron, to advise the establishment by
the University of Cambridge in their grounds of a Simpling Herbarium.
Nevertheless, we are now told (H. Lee, 1883) that Gerard's "ponderous
book is little more than a translation of Dodonoeus, from which
comparatively un-read author whole chapters have been taken verbatim
without acknowledgment."
No English work on herbs and plants is met with prior to the sixteenth
century. In 1552 all books on [8] astronomy and geography were
ordered to be destroyed, because supposed to be infected with magic.
And it is more than probable that any publications extant at that time on
the virtues of herbs (then associated by many persons with witchcraft),
underwent the same fate. In like manner King Hezekiah long ago
"fearing lest the Herbals of Solomon should come into profane hands,
caused them to be burned," as we learn from that "loyal and godly
herbalist," Robert Turner.
During the reigns of Edward the Sixth and Mary, Dr. William Bulleyn
ranked high as a physician and botanist. He wrote the first Boke of
Simples, which remains among the most interesting literary productions
of that era as a record of his acuteness and learning. It advocates the
exclusive employment of our native herbal medicines. Again, Nicholas
Culpeper, "student in physick," whose name is still a household word
with many a plain thinking English person, published in 1652, for the

benefit of the Commonwealth, his "Compleat Method whereby a man