212 Signatures and Astrology [ch. 



A later writer, Guy de la Brosse, criticised the theory 

 very acutely, pointing out that it was quite easy to imagine 

 any resemblance between a plant and an animal that 

 happened to be convenient. "C'est comme des nuees," he 

 writes, " que Ton fait ressembler a tout ce que la fantaisie 

 se represente, a une Grue, a une Grenoiiille, a un homme, 

 a une armee, et autres semblables visions 1 ." 



Both Paracelsus and Porta deprecate the use of foreign 

 drugs, on the ground that in the country where a disease 

 arises, there nature produces means to overcome it. This 

 idea is one which constantly recurs in the herbals. In 

 1664 Robert Turner wrote, "For what Climate soever is 

 subject to any particular Disease, in the same Place there 

 grows a Cure." There is ample evidence of the survival 

 of this theory even in the nineteenth century ; for instance, 

 in the preface to Thomas Green's • Universal Herbal ' of 

 1 8 16 we find the remark, " Nature has, in this country, as 

 well as in all others, provided, in the herbs of its own 

 growth, the remedies for the several diseases to which it is 

 most subject." The notion persists indeed to the present 

 day ; there is a wide-spread belief among children, for 

 example, that Docks always grow in the neighbourhood of 

 Stinging Nettles, in order to provide a cure in situ ! 

 Whether this view contains any grain of truth or not, it 

 certainly deserves our gratitude, since it led to Dr Mac- 

 lagan's discovery of Salicin as a cure for rheumatic fever. 

 On the ground that in the case of malarial diseases "the 

 poisons which cause them and the remedy which cures 

 them are naturally produced under similar climatic con- 

 ditions," Maclagan sought and found, in the bark of the 

 Willow, which inhabits low-lying, damp situations, this 

 drug, which has proved so valuable in the treatment of 

 rheumatism 2 . 



The doctrine of signatures is not the only piece of 

 botanical mysticism associated with the name of Paracelsus. 

 He was also a firm believer in the influence of the heavenly 



veterum testimonium accepit : deinde tarn fluxa et incerta est, ut pro scientia 

 aut doctrina nullatenus habenda videatur." ' Pemptades,' Book 1. Cap. xi. 

 1583. 



1 'De la nature, vertu, et utilite" des plantes,' p. 278, 1628. 



2 Maclagan, T. J. ' Influenza and Salicin,' The Nineteenth Century, Vol. 

 xxxi. p. 337, 1892. 



