" There be empiricks or blind practitioners of this age who teach 

 that with this herbe not only the hardness and swelling of the spleene 

 but all the infirmities of the liver, also, may be effectually and in a 

 short time removed. . . . But this is to be reconed among the old 

 wives' fables and that also which Discorides telleth of, touching the 

 gathering of spleenwort by night and other most vaine things which 

 are found scattered here and there in old books, from which most of 

 the later writers do not abstaine who many times fill up their pages 

 with lies and frivolous stories and by so doing do not a little deceive 

 young students." GERARD. 



