Chap. 6.] MEDICINAL PLANTS. 83 



maladies are sometimes inflamed 21 upon the sudden approach of 

 persons who have been journeying on foot. 



CHAP. 6. WHY A FEW OF THE PLANTS ONLY HAVE BEEN USED 



MEDICINALLY. PLANTS, THE MEDICINAL PROPERTIES OF WHICH 

 HAVE BEEN MIRACULOUSLY DISCOVERED. THE CYNORRHODOS : 

 TWO REMEDIES. THE PLANT CALLED DRACUNCULUS I ONE 

 REMEDY. THE BRITANNICA I FIVE REMEDIES. 



Such was the state of medical knowledge in ancient times, 

 wholly concealed as it was in the language of the Greeks. But 

 the main reason why the medicinal properties of most plants 

 remain still unknown, is the fact that they have been tested 

 solely by rustics and illiterate people, such being the only class 

 of persons that live in the midst of them : in addition to 

 which, so vast is the multitude of medical men always at hand, 

 that the public are careless of making any enquiries about 

 them. Indeed, many of those plants, the medicinal properties 

 of which have been discovered, are still destitute of names 

 such, for instance, as the one which we mentioned' 22 when speak- 

 ing of the cultivation of grain, and which we know for certain 

 will have the effect of keeping birds away from the crops, if 

 buried at the four corners of the field. 



But the most disgraceful cause of all, why so few simples 

 are known, is the fact that those even who are acquainted 

 with them are unwilling to impart their knowledge ; as though, 

 forsooth, they should lose for ever anything that they might 

 think fit to communicate to others ! Added to all this, there is 

 no well- ascertained method to guide us to the acquisition of this 

 kind of knowledge ; for, as to the discoveries that have been 

 made already, they have been due, some of them, to mere 

 accident, and others again, to say the truth, to the interposition 

 of the Deity. 



Down to our own times, the bite of the mad dog, the symp- 

 toms of which are a dread of water and an aversion to every 

 kind of beverage, was incurable ; 23 and it was only recently that 



21 Most probably by the agency of " feverish expectation " on the 

 part of the patient. 22 In B. xviii. c. 45. 



23 As Fee remarks, this dreadful malady is still incurable, notwithstand- 

 ing the eulogiums which have been lavished upon the virtues of the Scu- 

 tellaria laterifolia of Linnaeus, the Alisma pJantago, Genista tinctoria, and 

 other plants, as specifics for its cure. 



G2 



