n INTRODUCTION. 
the living system, it is perhaps one of the most ancient of all 
the sciences ; nor is this to be wondered at, when we consi(er 
that before the mineral world was explored, and its hidcen 
stores, by the aid of chemistry, made subservient to medi«al 
purposes and the other uses of man, the vegetable producticns 
were the only medicines known. Covered as the surface of 
the earth is with the spontaneous productions of nature, it vas 
natural for its inhabitants, in the first instance, to resort to 
such a ready source, without seeking in its bowels the means 
of preserving or restoring health ; and it is worthy of remark, 
that the virtues of many of our most active medicinal plan.s, 
were known to the common people of these countries \oig 
before those plants obtained a place in the Materia Medica of 
the Colleges : of these we may mention Digitalis, Colchicun, 
&c. 
In the East the greatest care was taken to acquire a know- 
ledge of the beneficial or noxious qualities of different vegetable 
productions : the Chaldeans communicated their knowledge to 
the Egyptians, and these to the Greeks. In Greece, we are 
told that zEsculapius attempted, by means derived from the 
vegetable kingdom, to cure various diseases ; his prescriptions 
were hung up in the temples, and finally, he was himself deified 
as the god of medicine, and temples erected to his honor. Hip- 
pocrates, (styled the father of medicine,) added to the observa- 
tions of ^sculapius, and in his works he makes mention of about 
two hundred and thirty medicinal plants, few, if any, of which 
are now known to us by the descriptions he has left. From 
the time of Hippocrates, the science of Medical Botany seems 
to have attracted the attention of a number of succeeding phi- 
losophers, but by all of them fable was blended with truth, and 
miraculous powers, suited to the superstition of the times, were 
ascribed to various herbs. Thus Pythagoras, the Samian, the 
fi^rst who is known to have written any treatise on Botany, 
absurdly affirmed that the Scilla Maritima, when preserved 
in vinegar, had the power of extending human existence ; he 
also declared the virtues of Anise against the bite of scorpions ; 
and eulogized the powers of Brassica, Sinapis, &c. But it is 
to Aristotle we are indebted for first treating of Botany as 
a philosophical science, and his labours were ably followed up 
by his disciple Theophrastus, who flourished about 350 years 
