Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure by William Thomas Fernie (ebook reader with internet browser .TXT) 📖

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 may cure himself being sick, for threepence charge, with such things only as grow in England, they being most fit for English bodies." Likewise in 1696 the Honourable Richard Boyle, F.R.S., published "A Collection of Choice, Safe, and Simple English Remedies, easily prepared, very useful in families, and fitted for the service of country people."

Once more, the noted John Wesley gave to the world in 1769 an admirable little treatise on Primitive Physic, or an Easy and Natural Method for Curing most Diseases; the medicines on which he chiefly relied being our native plants. For asthma, he advised the sufferer to "live a fortnight on boiled Carrots only"; for "baldness, to wash the head with a decoction of Boxwood"; [9] for "blood-spitting to drink the juice of Nettles"; for "an open cancer, to take freely of Clivers, or Goosegrass, whilst covering the sore with the bruised leaves of this herb"; and for an ague, to swallow at stated times "six middling pills of Cobweb."

In Wesley's day tradition only, with shrewd guesses and close observation, led him to prescribe these remedies. But now we have learnt by patient chemical research that the Wild Carrot possesses a particular volatile oil, which promotes copious expectoration for the relief of asthmatic cough; that the Nettle is endowed in its stinging hairs with "formic acid," which avails to arrest bleeding; that Boxwood yields "buxine," a specific stimulant to those nerves of supply which command the hair bulbs; that Goosegrass or Clivers is of astringent benefit in cancer, because of its "tannic," "citric," and "rubichloric acids"; and that the Spider's Web is of real curative value in ague, because it affords an albuminous principle "allied to and isomeric with quinine."

Long before this middle era in medicine, during quite primitive British times, the name and office of "Leeches" were familiar to the people as the first doctors of physic; and their parabilia or "accessibles" were worts from the field and the garden; so that when the Saxons obtained possession of Britain, they found it already cultivated and improved by what the Romans knew of agriculture and of vegetable productions. Hence it had happened that Rue, Hyssop, Fennel, Mustard, Elecampane, Southernwood, Celandine, Radish, Cummin, Onion, Lupin, Chervil, Fleur de Luce, Flax (probably), Rosemary, Savory, Lovage, Parsley, Coriander, Alexanders, or Olusatrum, the black pot herb, Savin, and other useful herbs, were already of common growth for kitchen uses, or for medicinal purposes.

[10] And as a remarkable incidental fact antiquity has bequeathed to us the legend, that goats were always exceptionally wise in the choice of these wholesome herbs; that they are, indeed, the herbalists among quadrupeds, and known to be "cunning in simples." From which notion has grown the idea that they are physicians among their kind, and that their odour is wholesome to the animals of the farmyard generally. So that in deference, unknowingly, to this superstition, it still happens that a single Nanny or a Betty is freakishly maintained in many a modern farmyard, living at ease, rather than put to any real use, or kept for any particular purpose of service. But in case of stables on fire, he or she will face the flames to make good an escape, and then the horses will follow.

It was through chewing the beans of Mocha, and becoming stupefied thereby, that unsuspicious goats first drew the attention of Mahomedan monks to the wonderful properties of the Coffee berry.

Next, coming down to the first part of the present century, we find that purveyors of medicinal and savoury herbs then wandered over the whole of England in quest of such useful simples as were in constant demand at most houses for the medicine-chest, the store-closet, or the toilet-table. These rustic practitioners of the healing art were known as "green men," who carried with them their portable apparatus for distilling essences, and for preparing their herbal extracts. In token of their having formerly officiated in this capacity, there may yet be seen in London and elsewhere about the country, taverns bearing the curious sign of "The Green Man and (his) Still."

It is told of a certain French writer not long since, that whilst complacently describing our British manners [11] customs, he gravely translated this legend of the into "L'homme vert, et tranquil."

Passing on finally to our own times at the close of the nineteenth century, we are able now-a-days, as has been already said, to avail ourselves of precise chemical research by apparatus far in advance of the untutored herbalist's still. He prepared his medicaments and his fragrant essences, merely as a mechanical art, and without pretending to fathom their method of physical action. But the skilled expert of to-day resolves his herbal simples into their ultimate elements by exact analysis in the laboratory, and has learnt to attach its proper medicinal virtue to each of these curative principles. It has thus come about that Herbal Physic under competent guidance, if pursued with intelligent care, is at length a reliable science of fixed methods, and crowned with sure results.

Moreover, in this happy way is at last vindicated the infinite superiority felt instinctively by our forefathers of home-grown herbs over foreign and far-fetched drugs; a superiority long since expressed by Ovid with classic felicity in the passage:—

    "AEtas cui facimus aurea nomen,
    Fructibus arbuteis, et humus quas educat herbis
    Fortunata fuit."—Metamorphos., Lib. XV.

    "Happy the age, to which we moderns give
    The name of 'golden,' when men chose to live
    On woodland fruits; and for their medicines took
    Herbs from the field, and simples from the brook."

or, as epitomised in the time-worn Latin adage:—

"Qui potest mederi simplicibus frustra quaerit composita."

    "If simple herbs suffice to cure,
    'Tis vain to compound drugs endure."

In the following pages our leading Herbal Simples [12] are reviewed alphabetically; whilst, to ensure accuracy, the genus and species of each plant are particularised.

Most of these herbs may be gathered fresh in their proper season by persons who have acquired a knowledge of their parts, and who live in districts where such plants are to be found growing; and to other persons who inhabit towns, or who have no practical acquaintance with Botany, great facilities are now given by our principal druggists for obtaining from their stores concentrated fresh juices of the chief herbal simples.

Again, certain preparations of plants used only for their specific curative methods are to be got exclusively from the Homoeopathic chemist, unless gathered at first hand. These, not being officinal, fail to find a place on the shelves of the ordinary Pharmaceutical druggist. Nevertheless, when suitably employed, they are of singular efficacy in curing the maladies to which they stand akin by the law of similars. For convenience of distinction here, the symbol H. will follow such particular preparations, which number in all some seventy-five of the simples described. At the same time any of the more common extracts, juices, and tinctures (or the proper parts of the plants for making these several medicaments), may be readily purchased at the shop of every leading druggist.

It has not been thought expedient to include among the Simples for homely uses of cure such powerfully poisonous plants as Monkshood (Aconite), Deadly Nightshade (Belladonna), Foxglove (Digitalis), Hemlock or Henbane (except for some outward uses), and the like dangerous herbs, these being beyond the province of domestic medicine, whilst only to be administered under the advice and guidance of a qualified prescriber.

[13] The chief purpose held in view has been to reconsider those safe and sound herbal curative remedies and medicines which were formerly most in vogue as homely simples, whether to be taken or to be outwardly applied. And the main object has been to show with what confidence their uses may be now resumed, or retained under the guidance of modern chemical teachings, and of precise scientific provings. This question equally applies, whether the Simples be employed as auxiliaries by the physician in attendance, or are welcomed for prompt service in a household emergency as ready at hand when the doctor cannot be immediately had.

Moreover, such a Manual as the present of approved Herbal Remedies need not by any means be disparaged by the busy practitioner, when his customary medicines seem to be out of place, or are beyond speedy reach; it being well known that a sick person is always ready to accept with eagerness plain assistant remedies sensibly advised from the garden, the store-closet, the spice-box, or the field.

    "Of simple medicines, and their powers to cure,
    A wise physician makes his knowledge sure;
    Else I or the household in his healing art
    He stands ill-fitted to take useful part."

So said Oribasus (freely translated) as long ago as the fourth century, in classic terms prophetic