PISH nsr MEDICINE. 



83 



But as Pliny appends to his recipe,— 



This one point should be previously observed, that the hair be 

 farst rooted out from any place you wish to make bald, 



it demands no great stretch of credulity to beUeve in the 

 subsequent efficacy of these drugs. 



Whilst the conduct of the ancient drama was entrusted 

 to very few actors, each having a clearly assigned part 

 to sustain, drugs, or the dramatis persona to counteract 

 disease, formed, in the hands of the ancient physician, 

 an ill-assorted set, either not combining in action or un- 

 certain in operation, or else, like French tisanes, wholly 

 inert. Complex prescriptions however, in remote times, 

 are just what might be expected; for medicine being a 

 science founded upon observation alone, must needs at 

 first have been empiric, the most adventurous practi- 

 tioner being then the best physician. To know what 

 really exercised control, and what control, on the vital 

 actions of the body in health and disease, required expe- 

 riments without end, and everything that could be swal- 

 lowed became accordingly the subject of experiment. 

 But as knowledge from such sources must be exceedingly 

 slow, and induction in so purely practical a matter of 

 little avail, a thousand such experiments would frequently 

 be made before any certain conclusion was arrived at. 

 With the recorded experience of twenty centuries, the 

 world at last has been enabled to purge its overloaded 

 pharmacopoeias of many nullities and absurdities, and of 

 some unsafe preparations once in vogue ; and every new 

 edition, by diminishing bulk, adds to their respectability 

 and authority as codes of practice. It has been disco- 

 vered that some of the supposed strings to Apollo's bow 

 are bowstrings to the patient, and that the old proposed 

 inscription for a pharmacy, 'Hie venditor galbanum, ela- 

 terium, opium, et omne quod in um desinit nisi remedium/ 

 was from their abuse as true as severe. Hippocrates blames 

 the physicians before him for the fewness of their drugs, 



