8 THE NEW ZEALAND FAMILY HERB DOCTOR. 
eternal life of happiness is the true hope of the Christian. In 
Genesis 1. 29, God says: ‘‘ Behold I have given you 
every herb-bearing seed which is upon the face of all the 
earth, and every tree in which is the fruit of a tree yielding 
seed, to you it shall be for meat.’? From these words and 
several others of a like import, the herbalist derives scriptural 
authority for his system of medicine. It must be a matter of 
conjecture as to how man got to know that by eatiig or 
drinking the juice of certain herbs his sickness would be 
cured. We may imagine one of the primitives striking his 
leg against anything ; knocking the skin off, he would look 
for something to cover it, and the first thing coming to his hand 
would be a broad leaf, most likely the plantain which grows 
everywhere and is generally known as healing leaves: 
one of these leaves bound on the sore would soon heal it. 
Probably asevere fallmight cause thissameindividuala bleeding 
from the internal organs, and reasoning from the effect of the 
leaves he applied to stop the bleeding and heal the sore on the 
leg, he would eat some of the same leaves ; and if unpleasant to 
eat he might boil them and drink the tea; or he might feel the 
discomfort of indigestion, and, after trying several, would 
find the herb that. relieved him best, and giving it a name, 
would use it again, and doubtless tell his children about it; 
and so after this manner the adage that necessity is the mother 
of invention, many of the medicinal plants were discovered. 
It is a matter of faith with some and doubt with others that 
every plant has one or more medicinal properties. In Ayer’s 
Almanac for 1884 there is the best definition of what gardeners 
consider their greatest enemy—weeds. It says: ‘‘A weed is 
a plant the virtues of which we have not yet found out. We 
are ready to admit that in the early ages of our race before 
artificial living was introduced, man had little or no need of 
physic, but as time rolled on and man step by step departed 
from God and nature in his manner of living, the various 
diseases which now desolate our homes and fill our hearts with 
sorrow, were added, to teach him that sin must bringsuffering.”’ 
The first intimation that medicine was practised as an art 
