till future Edition may
serve to supply this need. Certain botanical mistakes pointed out
with authority by the _Pharmaceutical Journal _have here been
duly corrected: and as many as fifty additional Simples will be
found described in the present Enlarged Edition. At the same time
a higher claim than hitherto made for the paramount importance of
the whole subject is now courageously advanced.

To all who accept as literal truth the Scriptural account of the
Garden of Eden it must be evident how intimately man's welfare
from the first was made to depend on his uses of trees and herbs.
The labour of earning his bread in the sweat of his brow by tilling
the ground: and the penalty of [xv] and thistles produced
thereupon, were alike incurred by Eve's disobedience in plucking
the forbidden fruit: and a signified possibility of man's eventful
share in the tree of life, to "put forth his hand, and eat, and live
for ever," has been more than vaguely revealed. So that with almost a
sacred mission, and with an exalted motive of supreme usefulness,
this Manual of healing Herbs is published anew, to reach, it is
hoped, and to rescue many an ailing mortal.

Against its main principle an objection has been speciously raised,
which at first sight appears of subversive weight; though, when
further examined, it is found to be clearly fallacious. By an able
but carping critic it was alleged that the mere chemical analysis of
old-fashioned Herbal Simples makes their medicinal actions no
less empirical than before: and that a pedantic knowledge of their
constituent parts, invested with fine technical names, gives them
no more scientific a position than that which our fathers
understood.

But, taking, for instance, the herb Rue, which was formerly
brought into Court to protect a and the Bench from gaol fever, and
other infectious disease; no one knew at the time by what
particular virtue the Rue could exercise this salutary power. But
more recent research has taught, that the essential oil contained in
this, and other allied aromatic herbs, such as Elecampane, [xvi]
Rosemary, and Cinnamon, serves by its germicidal principles
(stearoptens, methyl-ethers, and camphors), to extinguish bacterial
life which underlies all contagion. In a parallel way the antiseptic
diffusible oils of Pine, Peppermint, and Thyme, are likewise
employed with marked success for inhalation into the lungs by
consumptive patients. Their volatile vapours reach remot