The Betony 



diseases. From the bites of mad dogs to in- 

 digestion, from the stings of serpents to the 

 toothache, from a splinter in the thumb to the 

 plague, there was nothing it could not set right 

 — even witchcraft vanished before it ! The recital 

 of its virtues makes even the most vaunted 

 nostrum of a modern-day quack seem poor and 

 ineffectual. Through the whole of a long volume its 

 praises were set forth by the learned doctor, " and 

 it was not the practice of Octavius Caesar to keep 

 fools about him," remarks Culpepper. This same 

 old herbaUst further endorses the eulogy in the 

 words, "it is a very precious herb for certain, and 

 most fitting to be kept in a man's house." 



It was extraordinary how belief in its virtues 

 was ingrained. Turner, a physician at the end of 

 the seventeenth century, recounts nearly thirty 

 complaints that Betony will cure, and adds, " I 

 shall conclude with the words I have found in an 

 old manuscript under the virtues of it. ' More than 



all this have been proved of Betony.' " Because of 



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