HERBS AND THEIR ORIGIN 29 



or fruits had a jointed appearance, and thus remotely 

 suggested a scorpion, were sure remedies for the 

 bites of serpents. 



William Cole, an Englishman, in 1657, did much 

 work in furthering this doctrine of plant signatures. 

 He seems to have possessed a philosophic mind, 

 and to have been much troubled because a large 

 proportion of the plants with undoubted medicinal 

 virtues, had no obvious signature. However, he 

 got over this difhcultv by concluding that a certain 

 number were endowed with signatures, in order to 

 set man on the right track in his search for herbal 

 remedies; the remainder were purposely left blank, 

 in order to encourage his skill and resource in dis- 

 covering their properties for himself. A further 

 ingenious argument is, that a number of plants are 

 left without signatures because, if all were signed, 

 " the rarity of it, which is the delight, would be 

 taken away by too much harping upon one string." 



Another strong supporter in this country of the 

 doctrine of signatures was the astrological botanist, 

 Robert Turner. He states that God has imprinted 

 upon the plants, herbs, and flowers, as it were in 

 hieroglyphics, the very signature of their virtue. 



" In physic by some signature, Nature herself doth point a cure." 



In 1644, Robert Turner wrote: " For what climate 

 soever is subject to any particular disease, in the 

 same place there grows a cure." 



This point of view deserves our gratitude, as it 

 led to Dr. Maclagan^s discovery of salicin as a cure 

 for rheumatism. On the ground that in the case 

 of malarial disease " the poisons which cause them 



