Chap. 6.] 
MEDICIlSrAL PLANTS. 
S3 
maladies are sometimes inflamed-^ upon the sudden approach of 
persons who have been journeying on foot. 
CHAP. 6. WHY A FEW OF THE PLANTS ONLY HAVE BEEN USE!) 
MEDICINALLY. PLANTS, THE MEDICINAL PKOPEETIES OF WHICH 
HAVE BEEN MIEACULOCSLY DISCOVERED. THE CrNOERHODOS : 
TWO REMEDIES. THE PLANT CALLED DRACUNCULUS : ONE 
REMEDY. THE BRITANNICA : FIVE REMEDIES. 
Such was the state of medical knowledge in ancient times, 
wholly concealed as it was in the language of the Greeks. Eut 
the main reason why the medicinal properties of most plants 
remain still unknown, is the fact that they have been tested 
solely by rustics and illiterate people, such being the only class 
of persons that live in the midst of them : in addition to 
which, so vast is the multitude of medical men always at hand, 
that the public are careless of making any enquiries about 
them. Indeed, many of those plants, the medicinal properties 
of which have been discovered, are still destitute of names — 
such, for instance, as the one which we mentioned'^^ when speak- 
ing of the cultivation of grain, and which we know for certain 
will have the effect of keeping birds away from the crops, if 
buried at the four corners of the field. 
But the most disgraceful cause of all, why so few simples 
are known, is the fact that those even who are acquainted 
with them are unwilling to impart their knowledge ; as though, 
forsooth, they should lose for ever anything that they might 
think fit to communicate to others ! Added to all this, there is 
no well' ascertained method to guide us to the acquisition of this 
kind of knowledge ; for, as to the discoveries that have been 
made already, they have been due, some of them, to mere 
accident, and others again, to say the truth, to the interposition 
of the Deity. 
Down to our own times, the bite of the mad dog, the symp- 
toms of which are a dread of water and an aversion to every 
kind of beverage, was incurable and it was only recently that 
21 Most probably by the agency of " feverish expectation " on the 
part of the patient. 22 j^^ ^viii. c. 45. 
23 j\^s remarks, this dreadful malady is still incurable, notwithstand- 
ing the eulogiums which have been lavished upon the virtues of the Scu- 
tellaria laterifolia of Linn sens, the Alisma plantago, Genista tinctoria, and 
other plants, as specifics for its cure. 
a 2 
