Chap. 2.] THE LOTUS OE ITALY. 3 
are numberless other instances of sympathy and antipathy 
which we shall be careful to mention in their appropriate places. 
It is in tendencies of this description that the medical art 
first took its rise ; though it was originally intended, no doubt, 
by jN'ature, that our only medicaments should be those which 
universally exist, are everywhere to be found, and are to be 
procured at no great outlay, the various substances, in fact, from 
which we derive our sustenance. But at a later period the 
fraudulent disposition of mankind, combined with an ingenuity 
prompted by lucre, invented those various laboratories,^^ in 
which each one of us is promised an extension of his life—that 
is, if he will pay for it. Compositions and mixtures of an in- 
explicable nature forthwith have their praises sung, and the 
productions of Arabia and India are held in unbounded ad- 
miration in the very midst ^"^ of us. For some trifling 
sore or other, a medicament is prescribed from th6 shores 
of the Eed Sea ; while not a day passes but what the real 
remedies are to be found upon the tables of the very poorest 
man among ub}^ Eut if the remedies for diseases were 
derived from our own gardens, if the plants or shrubs were 
employed which grow there, there would be no art, forsooth, 
that would rank lower than that of medicine. 
Yes, avow it we must — the Eoman people, in extending its 
empire, has lost sight of its ancient manners, and in that we 
have conquered we are the conquered for now we obey the 
natives of foreign^^ lands, who by the agency of a single art have 
even out-generalled our generals.^^ More, however, on this 
topic hereafter. 
CHAP. 2. (2.) THE LOTUS OE ITALY : SIX REMEDIES. 
We have already '^'^ spoken in their appropriate places of the 
doubt ; but it is not improbable that the basis of it was spodium, or ashes 
of ivory. i6 u Officinas." 
" In medio." The reading is very doubtful here. 
This, of course, is mere exaggeration. 
He would seem to imply that the medical men of his age had conspired 
to gain an adventitious importance by imposing upon the credulity of the 
public, on the principle " Omne ignotum' pro magnifico ;" much as the 
" medicine -men " of the North American Indians do at the present day. 
20 He alludes to the physicians of Greece more particularly. 
21 Imperatoribus quoque imperaverunt." 
22 In B. xiii. c. 32, and B. xvi. c. 53. Pliny ascribes here to the Lotus of 
Italy, the Celtis Australis of Linnseus, the same medicinal properties that 
B 2 
