of the science of botany through popularization of
Linnaeus' system of bisexual classification, but Hill's medical
importance is summarized best as that of a compiler. His recommendation
of the study of botany as a cure for melancholics is sensible but verges
on becoming "a digression in praise of the author," a poetic _apologia
pro vita sua_ in Augustan fashion:

For me, I should advise above all other things the study of nature.
Let him begin with plants: he will here find a continual pleasure,
and continual change; fertile of a thousand useful things; even of
the utility we are seeking here. This will induce him to walk; and
every hedge and hillock, every foot-path side, and thicket, will
afford him some new object. He will be tempted to be continually in
the air; and continually to change the nature and quality of the
air, by visiting in succession the high lands and the low, the
lawn, the heath, the forest. He will never want inducement to be
abroad; and the unceasing variety of the subjects of his
observation, will prevent his walking hastily: he will pursue his
studies in the air; and that contemplative turn of mind, which in
his closet threatened his destruction, will thus become the great
means of his recovery (pp. 26-27).

Hill was forever extolling the claims of a life devoted to the study of
nature, as we see in a late work, _The Virtues of British Herbs_ (1770).
Judicious as is the logic of this recommendation, one cannot help but
feel that the emphasis here is less on diversion as a cure and more on
the botanic attractions of "every hedge and hillock, every foot-path
side, and thicket."

While Hill's rules and regulations regarding proper diet (Section VII)
are standard, several taken almost _verbatim et literatim_ from Cheyne's
list in _The English Malady_ (1733), his recommendation (Section VIII)
of "Spleen-Wort" as the best medicine for the hypochondriac patient is
not. Since Hill devotes so much space to the virtues of this herb and
concludes his work extolling this plant, a word should be said about it.
Throughout his life he was an active botanist. Apothecary, physician,
and writer though he was, it was ultimately botany that was his ruling
passion, as is made abundantly clear in his correspondence.[13] Wherever
he lived--whether in the small house in St. James's Street or in the
larger one on the Bayswater Road--he cultivated a