December 23,18710 THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. 
507 
' flask holding about a pound of the materials fitted with 
a tube bent at right angles about J-inch bore and 12 to 
18 inches long, containing a little loose cotton wool, and 
having a smaller tube fitted to the end of this for dipping 
into the liquid through which it is desired to pass the 
gas, a convenient stream can be obtained lasting several 
days. The production of the gas can be stopped and 
renewed at pleasure by withdrawing or applying the 
heat. An A!rgand lamp should be employed, or if a 
Bunsen is used, the top piece should be on the tube for 
spreading the flame, so as to avoid heating the flask on 
one spot. Heavy paraflin oil used for lubricating ma¬ 
chinery can be substituted for the solid paraffin, and 
good results are also obtained with commercial stearic 
acid, but with the latter the tube conveying the gas soon 
becomes covered with drops of a milky liquid, which is 
probably water and finely divided sulphur. With paraflin 
the tubes remain clear and bright, except for a little 
sulphur sublimate close to the neck of the flask. 
I observe that Reinsch recommends a laboratory pro¬ 
cess for obtaining pure sulphuretted hydrogen by heating 
in a glass flask equal parts of sulphur and suet. The re¬ 
commendation does not seem to have been generally fol¬ 
lowed, but the advantages resulting from the substitu¬ 
tion of paraflin for suet may lead to the more usual adop¬ 
tion of this process.— Chemical News. 
MEDICINAL HERBS AND QUACKERY.* 
BY ALEXANDER FORSYTH. 
If there be any one sort of gullibility more rampant 
than another in this city of Manchester, it is that of 
persons placing implicit reliance upon the quackery of 
the uneducated herb doctor; and not on him alone, for 
the engine-tenter in my own neighbourhood fills up his 
spare hours by salving all kinds of sores, and even goes 
so far as to lance finger-ends that have been mismanaged 
before he took them in hand. 
“ But oh, what peril doth environ 
The man that meddles with cold iron;” 
for the cures thus effected are not always creditable to 
the practitioner. Still in the face of the fact of the 
Manchester Infirmary being one of the best-managed 
institutions in the kingdom, -we constantly hear the old 
cuckoo cry that such-and-such an herb doctor cured 
scores of patients after all the leading men of the faculty 
had pronounced the case to be incurable. Burns laid 
the lash on most unmercifully when he painted Death 
and Dr. Hornbook discussing the merits of Buchan’s 
* Domestic Medicine.’ With every new generation of 
men there arises a new crop of quacks. As, however, I 
am only cavilling with the herbalist, I would but remark 
in passing that there are apparently three classes of 
these unlawful practitioners of the healing art. 
The first, by what Cobbett called “ mere hardness of 
mouth,” advertises himself as competent to do impossi¬ 
bilities,—for nothing less would do,—and of his ‘Ma¬ 
teria Medica ’ the world knows nothing. He addresses 
■himself to moneyed people, and it is for such only that 
his olla podrida is provided. The second lives by the 
middle class, who consult herbals and doctor themselves 
and others by rule and order. The third has no litera¬ 
ture, and his method of working consists in unwritten 
notions of old crones who have their “heal-all,” and by 
means of a few herbs, easily obtained at the right time 
• of the year, they confidently assert the cure of almost 
all complaints, as the old ballad has it,— 
“ Oh, they say it’s sure to do it, and it’s sure to do it well. 
But the first thing you must swallow is the vegetable pill.” 
Such parties visiting the poor are to be dreaded, for 
.they give advice gratis, and push their opinions into 
practice regardless of the fearful consequences of power¬ 
* Reprinted from the Gardeners' Chronicle. 
ful medicines misapplied. To persons struck down with 
disease, and so unable either to cope with them in argu¬ 
ment or keep them at a distance, that which might have 
been an angel’s mission becomes an awful visitation. 
_ But to return to the family herbals. Here before me 
lies Thornton’s Guide to the natures and properties of 
the various plants used in medicine, etc., the plants 
drawn from Nature. The English and botanical names 
are given, the Linnean Class and Orders ; the Latin and 
French languages are freely quoted ; and what has been 
handed down from sire to son unchallenged is still to 
be seen figuring by way of information. I will just 
instance the author’s remarks on one or two plants, such 
plants as the late Dr. Lindley said were of no known 
use to mankind. Many years ago I read in some reli¬ 
gious book that persons sleeping under the shade of the 
chaste-tree became chaste. This chaste-tree should 
rather be called chaste-bush, for the Vitex Agnns-castus 
grows only to the size of a broom-bush on a common. 
Now, this good property in the Vitex would, to use a 
medical phrase, evidently be for “ outward application 
onlysay, for a dose, a mere twig, like that of mistleto, 
might be hung up where its services were required. 
But our author of the ‘Family Herbal ’ improves upon 
the doctrine of the Divine, and speaks of the four-seeded 
berry of the Vitex as monks’ pepper, giving the Latin 
for the same, Piper monachorum, to confirm the respec¬ 
tability of the name, though Cobbett remarked that 
when nonsense was translated into French or Latin it 
was but nonsense still. So the doctor speaks of bache¬ 
lors taking the Vitex berries, indeed, “flying to them;” 
this would amount to “taking them inwardly.” Imagine 
a school-board in these days ordering a tiny besom made 
of Vitex twigs to be suspended in the class-rooms, and a 
few pecks of the berries scattered about for the young¬ 
sters to nibble at, just as cage birds get groundsel, 
shepherd’s-purse and chickweed! The doctor is seen 
to the greatest advantage when he comes to treat of the 
common field orchis, 0. mascula , where he quotes Sir 
John Hill’s ‘Materia Medica’ for the following:—“A 
fellow known to Sir John was once every year brought 
before the magistrates to answer for his evil deeds, and 
he always excused himself by saying that orchises wero 
then plentiful, and he could not resist eating them.” 
The doctor says that salep made of orchis root is given 
in milk, and tells us in French that the root is a very 
remarkable one. I have gathered this plant often as 
well as most of the other beautiful native terrestrial 
orchises, but never saw such a harvest as Sir John 
Hill’s criminal must have met with, when he ran mad 
with his belly full of orchis tubers. These orchis 
potatos would be worth the trouble to gather as medi¬ 
cine for the dull phlegmatic boys familiarly known by 
the nom de guerre , “Want of devil,” with no force of 
character, who would not be at the trouble to do any 
harm, and could not think of the self-denial required to 
do any good. Now, if a meal or two of male-orchis 
roots would only rouse such boys into the region of 
vivacity, how it would delight their mothers’ hearts to 
see them capering! But, joking apart, what faith could 
any sane person have in such writings as these ? What 
I want to see in such books are the truthful opinions of 
practical men on things as they are, and not the tran¬ 
scribed nonsense of other days. 
I could honestly name a very homely tree whose 
supple twigs have mended the manners of many boys, 
and could back my assertion w r ith Scripture; for a 
birch rod seen in repose, as it hangs on the walls of a 
school, is a “ terror to evil-doersbut when it is put in 
motion, woe betide. This, indeed, were a rod worthy 
of all praise. 
The third class of quacks consists of the old crones 
who have an idea that, if the medicine is only vegetable, 
it will be mild in its action and safe. I have gone into 
the herb market here, and bought herbs for the purpose 
of getting at the literature of the craft, to see what cer- 
