CHAPTER IX 



SOME MEDICINAL WILDINGS WORTH 

 KNOWING 



Homed. Your plantain leaf is excellent for that. 

 Benvolio. For what, I pray thee? 

 Romeo. For your broken shin. 



Romeo and Juliet. 



THE subject of medicinal plants is one that I 

 approach with considerable reluctance; be- 

 cause, though the employment of wild herbs as reme- 

 dies has been a cherished practice with sick humanity 

 whether savage or civilized from the earliest times, 

 there exists still great diversity of opinion about 

 the eflScacy of particular simples. One has only to 

 thumb over any ancient herbal or old botanical 

 manual or the succeeding editions of pharmacopoeias 

 to notice the decline and fall of one popular medicinal 

 plant after another with the progress of the years, 

 and so to become rather skeptical about the whole 

 subject. Nevertheless, it is a poor chaff-pile that 

 does not hold some kernels of pure grain; and this 

 chapter, without professing to trench upon the prov- 



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