On its First Reading, a Bill drafted in Parliament meets with
acquiescence from the House on both sides mainly because its
merits and demerits are to be more deliberately questioned when it
comes up again in the future for a second closer Reading,
Meanwhile, its faults can be amended, and its omissions supplied:
fresh clauses can be introduced: and the whole scheme of the Bill
can be better adapted to the spirit of the House inferred from its
first reception.
In somewhat similar fashion the Second Edition of "Herbal
Simples" is now submitted to a Parliament of readers with the
belief that its ultimate success, or failure of purpose, is to depend
on its present revised contents, and the amplified scope of its
chapters.
The criticism which public journalists, not a few, thought proper to
pass on its First Edition have been attentively considered herein. It
is true their comments were in some cases so conflicting as to be
difficult of practical appliance. The fabled old man and his ass
stand always in traditional warning against futile attempts to
satisfy inconsistent objectors, or to carry into effect suggestions
made by irreconcilable censors. "_Quot homines, tot [xiv]
sententioe_," is an adage signally verified when a fresh venture is
made on the waters of chartered opinion. How shall the perplexed
navigator steer his course when monitors in office accuse him on
the one hand of lax precision throughout, and belaud him on the
other for careful observance of detail? Or how shall he trim his
sails when a contemptuous Standard-bearer, strangely uninformed
on the point, ignores, as a leader of any repute, "one Gerard," a
former famous Captain of the Herbal fleet? With the would-be
Spectator's lament that Gerard's graphic drawings are regrettedly
wanting here, the author is fain to concur. He feels that the
absence of appropriate cuts to depict the various herbs is quite a
deficiency: but the hope is inspired that a still 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 remote parts of
the diseased air-passages, and heal by destroying the morbid
germs which perpetuate mischief therein. It need scarcely be said
the very existence of these causative microbes, much less any
mode of cure by their abolishment, was quite unknown to former
Herbal Simplers.
Again, in past times a large number of our native, plants acquired
a well-deserved, but purely empirical celebrity, for curing scrofula
and scurvy. But later discovery has shown that each of these
several herbs contains lime, and earthy salts, in a subtle form of
high natural sub-division: whilst, at the same time, the law of cure
by medicinal similars has established the cognate fact that to those
who inherit a strumous taint, infinitesimal doses of these earth
salts are incontestably curative. The parents had first undergone a
gradual impairment of health because of calcareous matters to
excess in their general conditions of sustenance; and the lime
proves potent to cure in the offspring what, through the parental
surfeit, was entailed as [xvii] a heritage of disease. Just in the
same way the mineral waters of Missisquoi, and Bethesda, in America,
through containing siliceous qualities so sublimated as almost to
defy the analyst, are effective to cure cancer, albuminuria, and
other organic complaints.
Nor is this by any means a new policy of cure. Its barbaric practice
has long since obtained, even in African wilds, where the native
snake doctor inoculates with his prepared snake poison to save the
life of a victim otherwise fatally bitten by another snake of the
same deadly virus. To Ovid, of Roman fame (20 B.C.), the same
sanative axiom was also indisputably known as we learn from his
lines:--
"Tunc observatas augur descendit in herbas;
Usus et auxilio est anguis ab angue dato."
"Then searched the Augur low mid grass close scanned
For snake to heal a snake-envenomed hand."
And with equal cogency other arguments, which are manifold,
might be readily adduced, as of congruous force, to vindicate our
claim in favour of analytical knowledge over blind experience in
the methods of Herbal cure, especially if this be pursued on the
broad lines of enlightened practice by similars.
So now, to be brief, and to change our allegory, "on the banks of
the Nile," as Mrs. Malaprop would have pervertingly put it, with
"a nice [xviii] derangement of epitaphs," we invite our many
guests to a simple "dinner of herbs." Such was man's primitive
food in Paradise: "every green herb bearing seed, and every tree in
the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed:" "the green herb for
meat for every beast of the earth, and every fowl of the air." What
better Preface can we indite than a grace to be said before sitting
down to the meal? "Sallets," it is hoped, will be found "in the lines
to make the matter savoury." Far be it from our object to preach a
prelude of texts, or to weary those at our board I with a
meaningless long benediction. "'Tis not so plain as the old Hill of
Howth," said tender-hearted witty Tom Hood, with serio-comic
truth, "a man has got his belly full of meat, because he talks with
victuals in his mouth." Rather would we choose the "russet Yeas
and honest kersey Noes" of sturdy yeoman speech; and cheerfully
taking the head of our well-stocked table, ask in homely terms that
"God will bless these the good creatures of His Herbal Simples to
our saving uses, and us to His grateful service."
1897.
[xix]