402 Dr George Johnston on the 
And scatter them far, fur too fast away 
As worthless weeds, oh ! little do we know, 
When they have soothed, when saved!” 
Viewed from the high vantage ground of modern intelli- 
gence, there is much in the simpler’s lore that is interesting 
to the student both in natural and in civil history. The re- 
lief of suffering humanity is the grand idea which looms 
through the mists of ignorance and credulity ; the mind re- 
verts to the remote age when the Druids walked in the old 
oak grove; the Saxon colonization, and the Danish inroads ; 
and how the politic churchman of a later age collected and 
improved upon whatever was useful. 
It is not becoming in all cases to scoff at the marvellous 
virtues attributed to some plants, and the extraordinary 
cures said to have been effected by others, as these ascrip- 
tions are all beggared by the advertisements of Elixirs, 
Pills, Plasters, and Ointments of modern quacks, which 
crowd our newspapers, and disfigure our places of public 
resort ; for the high consideration in which the healing art 
was held, tended greatly to secure to the physician, not only 
implicit obedience to his prescriptions, but also that peculiar 
mental or nervous desire of the patient to profit by the same, 
which is of the greatest importance in the physician’s attempt 
to assist nature. Imagination, acting through the nervous 
system, is the great mediating agent between body and 
mind, hence this implicit obedience to prescriptions, this 
‘ faith, or desire, to derive benefit from the prescription is the 
source and support of all those brazen-faced systems of 
quackery which disgrace our own age. 
The medical properties of several of our native plants 
have even of late years been the subject of experiment in the 
Edinburgh Infirmary and elsewhere, without obtaining any 
very striking results; our author recommends poultices of 
Groundsel and Eupatorium as being worthy of farther experi- 
ment :— Although “ Culpepper’s complete herbal, with nearly 
four hundred medicines made from English herbs,” still finds 
a pretty good sale amongst the border peasantry, still the 
old faith in the coltsfoot, the goosefoot, the elder, and other 
plants, is fast passing away, and it is seldom that the cot- 
