HISTORY OF BOTANY. 3 



taken to cure a disease, and candidly confessed that of 

 forty-two patients entrusted to his care only seventeen had 

 recovered. He is said to have lived in the greatest 

 popularity, but was continually employed in careful study 

 of the symptoms and course of diseases, and in applying 

 certain scientific principles, which he had deduced from his 

 observations, to effect their cure. He has been called the 

 father of medicine, for not only is he the earliest scientific 

 writer on the subject, but being a careful observer, and also 

 a sound thinker, many of his teachings have remained as 

 guides to this da3\ He died B.C. J]61, in his 99th year, 

 revered by all, and after his death he received, with the 

 name of Great, the same honours that were paid to 

 Hercules.* 



Theophrastus was a native of Eresus, in Lesbos, and was 

 born about b.c. 390. He studied under Plato, and after- 

 w^ards under Aristotle, and during a long life wrote 200 

 treatises on different subjects : about twenty of these are 

 still in existence, two of them being on plants. Not being 

 a physician, his ' History of Plants ' embraces a larger 

 view of the vegetable kingdom than the work of Hippocrates. 

 He treats first on physiology, and then goes on to observa- 

 tions on trees, different kinds of timber, and the choice of 

 it; afterwards there is a book on shrubs, thorny plants, 

 roses, and other ornamental plants usually cultivated in 

 gardens, and then follow kitchen garden plants, and those 

 that grow wild, and grain of different kinds : his last book 

 is upon gums and exudations, and the means of obtaining 



^' As is nearly always the case with respect to very old authors, 

 neither all the incidents that are generally set down of the life of 

 Hippocrates, nor the authenticity of all the works that have been 

 attributed to him, can be implicitly relied on. It has been said that 

 out of seventy-two that at one time or another have been called his, 

 only about one-fourth are really so, 



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