i6o THE BOOK OF HERBS 



Bugloss hath its stalks all to be speckled like a snake or 

 viper, and is a most singular remedy against poyson and 

 the sting of scorpions. . . . Heart Trefoyle is so called, 

 not onely because the leafe is triangular, like the heart 

 of a man, but also because each leafe contains the per- 

 fection of the heart, and that in its proper colour, viz., 

 in flesh colour. It defendeth the heart. . . . The leaves 

 of Saint John's Wort seem to be pricked or pinked very 

 thick with little holes like the pores of a man's skin. It is 

 a soveraigne remedy for any cut in the skin." This was 

 a view very generally shared. William Browne says : 



In physic by some signature 

 Nature herself doth point us out a cure. 



And again : 



Heaven hath made me for thy cure, 

 Both the physician and the signature. 



Br. Pastorals, book iii. 



Drayton's Hermit pursued a development of this theory. 

 He merely accepted the conclusions of earlier authorities 

 who had made discoveries about the properties of plants 

 and had named them accordingly. 



Some (herbs) by experience, as we see, 

 Whose names express their natures. 



JVluses* Elysium. 



It was, naturally, more simple to administer all-heal, 

 for a wound ; hore-hound, for " mad dogge's biting," 

 and so on, than to decipher the signature from the plant, 

 himself, and so he and many others, prescribed the herbs, 

 with more reference to their names, than unprejudiced 

 attention to results. 



The planets were another determining factor in the 

 choice of remedies. Each plant was dedicated to a 

 planet and each planet presided over a special part of the 

 body, therefore, when any part was affected, a herb be- 

 longing to the planet that governed that special part must. 



