adopting these, he has increased the salutary
effects of his invaluable tea. From reading Hippocrates, Discorides,
and Galen, he found the ancients derived all their knowledge of plants
by their taste and smell. With these examples before him, and his own
propensity to study, joined to his penetrating judgement, it is no
wonder he should have so well succeeded. Thus he recurred to the
original mode of inquiry, which first established and raised the
eminence of physic; neglecting that delusive principle of Aristotle's
philosophy, which has since taught too many physicians to express the
virtue of medicines by hot, cold, moist, and dry, without deriving the
least information from their senses Dr. Solander, aided by chemical
analysis, distinguished the virtue by the taste or odour of every
plant. By this means their specific juices he found tasted either
earthy, mucilaginous, sweet, bitter, aromatic, fetid, acrid, or
corrosive. From this experience he found the observation of some
botanists to be true, "That there is no virtue yet known in plants but
what depends on the taste or smell, and may be known by them."[2] With
this infallible means of pursuing his enquiry, he formed a tea composed
of herbs that are in their nature astringent, balsamic, aromatic,
cephalic, and diaphoretic. These virtues combined may be said to form
one of the most incomparable specifics, as a nutritive and restoring
aliment, that has been discovered.

[2] _Floyer, Malpighus, Epew, Harvey, Willis, Lower, Needham,
Glisson, &c._

In the astringent, the acid fixing upon the more earthly parts, the
nutritious oil is more easily separated, which renders them also
pectoral, cleaning, and diuretic. This part of the tea is in its nature
particularly serviceable in all cases where vulnerary medicines are
requisite. They particularly amend the acid in the nervous juice, and
thus restore the equal motion of the spirits, which were obstructed or
retarded by spasms or convulsions. By the volatile oil and volatile
pungent salt, obstructions are opened, and the motions of the languid
blood increased to a healthy degree of circulation. They resolve
coagulated phlegm in the stomach, preserve the fluidity of the juices,
and promote digestion, by assisting the bile in its operation.

And with regard to their balsamic and aromatic nature, these qualities
warm the stomach and expel wind, by rarefying the flatuous exhalations
from chyle in the prima viae.