12 | THE NEW ZEALAND FAMILY HERB DOCTOR. 
by contraries), 7.¢., the homoeopathic school (whose creed means 
we cure by similars), and the school we own as ours, viz., the 
botanic eclectic, having no creed unless it be a preference for 
vegetable agents instead of mineral. As everything that is 
human will advance (or it may be retrograde) the eclectic 
system, which as its name indicates, chooses from every source 
agents that will assist in relieving or curing disease. It had 
its beginning in America, by Samuel Thompson, a New 
England farmer, whose life teaches us the fact that wisdom 
does not always come through the recognised channels of 
human learning. In fact, most of our valuable medicines have 
been found by such children of nature as Thompson and others 
who studied in the fields and by the bedsides of suffering 
friends. This man was born in the backwoods of America, 
and from youth to manhood was engaged in clearing the forest. 
As a youth he took an interest in medicine, and this natural 
taste was encouraged and improved by an old lady termed an 
herbalist, who took young Thompson to the meadows with her 
as she gathered her store of herbs and roots. One day, while 
felling timber he had the misfortune to almost sever his foot 
witha misguided blow. There was a root doctor several miles 
from the settlement; thither his father drew him on a rough 
sledge. By good treatment he recovered, and for a number 
of years enjoyed such good health that he thought little 
about medicine; he married and settled on his own 
frontier homestead. The neighbourhood soon became 
populated. As an encouragement to a young doctor to settle 
Thompson gave him a piece of ground whereon to put his 
house. _ Several young Thompsons came home, and not being 
very robust, the doctor had a good many visits to make and 
charge Thompson with. It happened that the eldest child, 
a girl, took ill with what was then termed canker rash, a very 
bad eruptive fever.‘ One of her eyes was lost, and the doctor 
gave her upas lost ; he said she could not live till the morning. 
Thompson told him he would try and save the child himself. 
He first made a tea of bayberry bark, which he thought 
contained a purifying or anti-canker property. He then got 
