SIMPLES AND SIMPLEES. 



WHEN chemistry had become elevated to an equal rank 

 with the other exact sciences, physicians, who in the 

 days of alchemy and astrology had dealt almost exclu- 

 sively in simples, discarded from their practice the greater 

 part of the herbs of the old pharmacopoeias, and used in 

 the place of them the more certain and efficacious prepa- 

 rations of the laboratory. The metals, in the various 

 forms of oxides, carbonates, chlorides, sulphurets, and 

 other chemical compositions, were proved to be more 

 decided and commensurable in their action upon the 

 human system than roots and herbs. Chemistry took 

 the place of botany to a great extent in the healing art, 

 and caused a gradual division of the practice and the 

 dispensation of medicine. The apothecary assumed the 

 department of preparing and compounding the drugs used 

 by the physician ; and as the medical faculty dropped the 

 general use of simples, the dispensation of them naturally 

 fell into the hands of certain individuals of the female 

 sex. They became the conservators of ancient medical 

 notions that science had rejected, and gradually intro- 

 duced a sort of domestic practice which is not yet entirely 

 discontinued. 



They were, indeed, the traditional followers of the prac- 

 tice of the early physicians, when they were simplers and 

 astrologers, and administered to the wants of those people 

 who believed the herbs of the field to be the only safe 

 remedies for disease. Their botanical knowledge was 

 confined to the mere identification of plants, and to cer- 



