Chap. 2.] THE LOTUS OF ITALY. 3 



are numberless other instances of sympathy and antipath)' 

 which we shall be careful to mention in their appropriate places. 



It is in tendencies of this description that the medical art \ 

 first took its rise ; though it was originally intended, no doubt, 

 by Nature, that our only medicaments should be those which 

 universally exist, are everywhere to be found, and are to be 

 procured at no great outlay, the various substances, in fact, from 

 which we derive our sustenance. But at a later period the 

 fraudulent disposition of mankind, combined with an ingenuity 

 prompted by lucre, invented those various laboratories,^^ in 

 which each one of us is promised an extension of his life — that 

 is, if he will pay for it. Compositions and mixtures of an in- 

 explicable nature forthwith have their praises sung, and the 

 productions of Arabia and India are held in unbounded ad- 

 miration in the very midst" of us. For some trifling 

 sore or other, a medicament is prescribed from the shores 

 of the Bed Sea ; while not a day passes but what the real 

 remedies are to be found upon the tables of the very poorest 

 man among us.^^ But if the remedies for diseases were 

 derived from our own gardens, if the plants or shrubs were 

 employed which grow there, there would be no art, forsooth, 

 that would rank lower than that of medicine. ' r 



Yes, avow it we must — the Roman people, in extending its 

 empii'e, has lost sight of its ancient manners, and in that we 

 have conquered we are the conquered :^^ for now we obey the 

 natives of foreign^'' lands, who by the agency of a single art have 

 even out-generalled our generals.'^^ More, however, on this 

 topic hereafter. 



CHAP. 2. (2.) THE LOTUS OF ITALY : SIX EEMEDIES. 



We have already^- spoken in their appropriate places of the 



doubt ; but it is not improbable that the basis of it was spodium, or ashes 

 of ivory. ^^ " Officinas." 



^^ " In medio." The reading is very doubtful here. 



^^ This, of course, is mere exaggeration. 



^^ He would seem to imply that the medical men of his age had conspired 

 to gain an adventitious importance by imposing upon the credulity of the 

 public, on the principle " Omne ignotum pro magnifico ;" much as the 

 "medicine-men" of the North American Indians do at the present day. 



20 He alludes to the physicians of Greece more particularly. 



2^ " Imperatoribus quoque imperaverunt." 



22 In B. xiii. c. 32, and B. xvi. c. 53. Pliny ascribes here to the Lotus of 

 Italy, the Celtis Australis of Linnaeus, the same medicinal properties that 



B 2 



