n herb garden that
flattered his knowledge and ability. Connoisseurs raved about its
species and considered it one of the showpieces of London. His arrogant
personality alone prevented him from becoming the first Keeper of the
Apothecary's Garden in Chelsea, although he was for a time
superintendent to the Dowager Princess of Wales's gardens at Kensington
Palace and at Kew. His interest in cultivation of herbs nevertheless
continued; over the years Hill produced more than thirty botanical
works, many of them devoted to the medical virtues of rare herbs such as
"Spleen-Wort." Among these are _The British Herbal_ (1756), _On the
Virtues of Sage in Lengthening Human Life_ (1763), _Centaury, the Great
Stomachic_ (1765), _Polypody_ (1768), _A Method of Curing Jaundice_
(1768), _Instances of the Virtue of Petasite Root_ (1771), and _Twenty
Five New Plants_ (1773).[14] It is therefore not surprising that he
should believe a specific herb to be the best remedy for a complicated
medical condition. Nor is his reference to the Ancients as authority for
the herbal pacification of an inflamed spleen surprising in the light of
his researches: he was convinced that every illness could be cured by
taking an appropriate herb or combination of herbs. Whereas a few
nonmedical writers--such as John Wesley in _Primitive Physick_
(1747)--had advocated the taking of one or two herbs in moderate dosage
as anti-hysterics (the eighteenth-century term for all cures of the
hyp), no medical writer of the century ever promoted the use of herbs to
the extent that Hill did. In fairness to him, it is important to note
that his herbal remedies were harmless and that many found their way
into the official _London Pharmacopeia_. "The virtues of this smooth
Spleen-wort," he insists, "have stood the test of ages; and the plant
every where retained its name and credit: and one of our good
herbarists, who had seen a wonderful case of a swoln spleen, so big, and
hard as to be felt with terror, brought back to a state of nature by it"
(p. 37).[15] The greatest portion of Hill's concluding section combines
advertisement for the powder medicine he was himself manufacturing at a
handsome profit together with a protest against competing apothecaries:
"An intelligent person was directed to go to the medicinal herb shops in
the several markets, and buy some of this Spleen-wort; the name was
written, and shewn to every one; every shop received his money, and
almost eve