4 HISTORY OF BOTANY 



powdered root or leaf decoction might alleviate an internal 

 malady or heal a wound. When his ailment was, as he 

 generally believed it to be, inflicted on him by some super- 

 natural being, it became necessary to consult a go-between, 

 the medicine man, who, he supposed, had confidential 

 dealings with the deity on the one hand and expert 

 knowledge of the appropriate drugs on the other. The 

 medicine man was thus a very important personage, more 

 powerful often than the chieftain of the tribe himself. 

 It is not necessary for you to tax your imagination in 

 reconstructing the precise relations of the medicine man 

 to the other members of the primitive human society ; 

 he is still in existence and still exercises his powers for 

 good and for evil on his fellow tribesmen, as you may 

 read in the pages of Sir J. G. Frazer's Golden Bough. 



When we reach historical times the medicine man is 

 replaced by the collector of simplicia, i.e. of the raw 

 materials out of which the compound medicine is made, 

 and by the physician who prescribes the drug. So, by 

 and by, in the alleys of the old Greek cities there sprang 

 into existence the shops of the sellers of drugs, or pharma- 

 copolai, and of the collectors of roots, or rhizotomoi, 

 while in the more select avenues the physicians, the real 

 descendants of the medicine men, held consultations with 

 their clients, diagnosed their ailments, and wrote the 

 appropriate prescriptions. 



But, as you will readily understand, something more 

 was needed than a correct diagnosis of the complaint and 

 a suitable prescription ; the next essential was a pure 

 drug, and the acquirement of that depended on the 

 rhizotomoi who gathered, prepared, and sold, to the 

 physician or to the patient, roots and leaves of medicinal 

 repute. Probably many of the physicians were charla- 

 tans; it is certain that most of the apothecaries were. 

 In Lucian's Dialogues of the Gods Hercules is made to call 

 Aesculapius " a root digger and a wandering quack " ; 

 but some of the rhizotomoi whose names have come down 



