about, or the symptoms materially
improved, by giving the tincture of Sundew throughout several
weeks--from four to twenty drops in the twenty-four hours. And it
has further become an established fact that the same tincture [7]
will serve with remarkable success to allay the troublesome
spasms of Whooping Cough in its second stage, if given in small
doses, repeated several times a day.

From these several examples, therefore, which are easy to be
understood, we may fairly conclude that positive remedial actions
are equally exercised by other Herbal Simples, both because of
their chemical constituents and by reason of their curing in many
cases according to the known law of medicinal correspondence.

Until of late no such an assured position could be rightly claimed
by our native herbs, though pretentions in their favour have been
widely popular since early English times. Indeed, Herbal physic
has engaged the attention of many authors from the primitive days
of Dioscorides (A.D. 60) to those of Elizabethan Gerard, whose
exhaustive and delightful volume published in 1587 has remained
ever since in paramount favour with the English people. Its quaint
fascinating style, and its queer astrological notions, together with
its admirable woodcuts of the plants described, have combined to
make this comprehensive Herbal a standing favourite even to the
present day.

Gerard had a large physic-garden near his house in Old Bourne
(Holborn), and there is in the British Museum a letter drawn up
by his hand asking Lord Burghley, his patron, to advise the
establishment by the University of Cambridge in their grounds of
a Simpling Herbarium. Nevertheless, we are now told (H. Lee, 1883)
that Gerard's "ponderous book is little more than a translation
of Dodonoeus, from which comparatively un-read author whole
chapters have been taken verbatim without acknowledgment."

No English work on herbs and plants is met with prior to the
sixteenth century. In 1552 all books on [8] astronomy and
geography were ordered to be destroyed, because supposed to be
infected with magic. And it is more than probable that any
publications extant at that time on the virtues of herbs (then
associated by many persons with witchcraft), underwent the same
fate. In like manner King Hezekiah long ago "fearing lest the
Herbals of Solomon should come into profane hands, caused them
to be burned," as we learn from that "loyal and godly herbalist,"
Robert Turner.