150 HOMffiOPATHY NOT A MODERN SCIENCE. [May, 



eflFects upon the persons wlio ate them, but I do not know any 

 instance recorded of the same effects being produced by eating 

 the root of the plant ; but I should like to find one. The ques- 

 tion has been mooted in your Journal as to the range of this plant, 

 and some one has told us it grows in Fifeshire, the site of the 

 blasted heath where Macbeth met the witches, but I do not find 

 that the question has been satisfactorily cleared up. H. B. 



Eommopathy not a Modern Science. 



If you can allow this subject to be brought within the scope of 

 your Journal, T think it may be interesting to some of your readers, 

 particularly to those who delight in "doses infinitesimal," and 

 carry in their pockets a neatly bound case, well filled with deli- 

 cate bottles of globules, composed of Dulcamara, Belladonna, 

 Chamomilla, Pulsatilla, Bryonia, etc., the produce of British 

 plants. 



In Shakespeare's ' Romeo and Juliet ' we have the following 

 passage, which plainly describes the principles of Homoeopathy : — 



BenvoUo to Romeo. 

 "Tut, man; one fire burns out another's burning; 

 One pain is lessened by another's anguish. 

 Turn giddy, and be holped by backward turning ; 

 One desperate g-rief cures with another's languish. 

 Take thou some new infection to the eye, 

 And the rank poison of the old will die." 



Dr. William Turner, in his 'Herbal,' dated 1551, speaking of 

 Wolfsbane, or Aconite, says, " This of all poisons is the most 

 hastie poison ; howbeit Pliny saith this herb will kill a man if 

 he take it, except it find in a man something it may kill ; with 

 that it will strive as with its match which it has found within the 

 man ; but this fighting is only when it hath found poison in the 

 bowels of a living creature ; and a marvel it is that two deadly 

 poisons do both die in a man, that the man may live." 



William Coles, in his 'Introduction to the Knowledge of 

 Plants,' ch. xxviii., says, " Certain it is that many herbs which 

 the rude and ignorant call weeds, are the ingredient of many 

 soveraigne medicines. Winter Wolfsbane, which otherwise is 



