The Chelsea Physic Garden is the oldest public botanical garden in Great Britain, but there were private ones of older date, such as that of Gerard, the author of The Herbal, which was situated in Holborn, and that of Tradescant, the famous Dutch traveller, gardener to James I., who had an extensive garden of exotic plants in Lambeth.
The founders of the Chelsea Garden were the members of the Society of Apothecaries, who have maintained it for over two centuries entirely for scientific purposes, as was stipulated in the deed of gift, executed by Sir Hans Sloane, in which the growing or cultivation of plants for purely pharmaceutical purposes, or for trade, was strictly forbidden. The origin of this so-called Physic Garden was somewhat amusing, and anything but scientific. The ground was first fixed upon as an eligible spot for building a boathouse for the state barge of the Apothecaries’ Company. This ground was walled in about 1674, and planted with trees in 1678, and herbs were grown in it for use in the company’s laboratories, some of these plants being from time to time exchanged for others from the University of Leyden. Sir Hans (then Dr.) Sloane bought the estate in 1712; and, as might have been expected of a man of his parts, a pupil of the chemist Stahl and of the botanist Tournefort, and a friend of the great Ray, a new era of usefulness was begun in the Chelsea Garden. In 1722 he handed over the land to the Apothecaries’ Society, at a yearly rental of £5, and an undertaking that fifty specimens of fifty species of distinct plants, well dried and mounted as herbarium specimens and properly named, should be handed over to the Royal Society each year until 2000 had been duly delivered. In a catalogue issued in 1730, written by Miller, the head gardener, are enumerated 499 plants, mostly medicinal, so one may judge of the extent of the gardens at that time. Exotics were cultivated in hothouses in 1732, and in 1736 Linnæus paid a visit to the garden.
Thomas Dover, the originator of Dover’s powder, was born in England in the year 1660. He settled and practised medicine for a time in Bristol; left there for a period, and returned again. He lived with, and was contemporaneous with Sydenham. He gained much professional reputation on the occasion of a severe epidemic of fever. This may have suggested to him the use of ipecacuanha and opium in a compound.
In Dover’s day and time, the apothecaries were in the ascendancy, being the medical practitioners, whilst the physicians were chiefly called in to attend in childbirth and protracted illness. Indeed, it is naïvely stated that the apothecary surgeons rode in their chaises, while the doctors walked, and that the former were generally first consulted when the choice of a family physician was to be made. Mercury had at this time an unrestrained use—perhaps abuse would be a better word,—and much severe public stricture was made upon the fact. Crude quicksilver was administered, and Dover was a warm advocate of its use—in fact, he was called the quicksilver doctor. One Captain Henry Coit, a patient of Dover’s, took an ounce and a quarter of crude mercury daily, until he had used more than two pounds weight! Dover professed to believe that mercury freed the patient from all vermicular diseases, opened all obstructions, and made a pure balsam of the blood.
The doctors and apothecaries were at loggerheads. Dover said the best way to affront the latter was to order too little physic—each patient being deemed to be worth a certain sum to the dispenser.
In 1708 Dover joined the company of a group of Bristol merchants in a scheme to fit out two vessels for privateering in the South Seas. Dover, it seems, went as captain, and the voyage was eminently successful in booty. They took in various reprisals from the Spaniards—the hoards of treasure and gold which they in turn had obtained from the native Indians—the principle of might applied to right. The expedition returned to Britain enriched with spoil, the treasure amounting to £170,000 sterling. It was during this memorable voyage that Dover, landing with some of his crew on the island of Juan Fernandez, discovered the existence of Alexander Selkirk—Robinson Crusoe—in his dreary solitude on this desert shore.
CHAPTER XIV.
AMULETS, TALISMANS AND CHARMS.
From very remote times a somewhat curious link has existed between the art of healing and religion, and those who proposed the cure of the body or the soul have ever sought to work upon that uncanny chord we call superstition, which pervades more or less all classes of mankind. The influence of superstition manifested itself in many ways, and among others the belief in amulets, talismans and charms survives even to-day. Two thousand years ago they were dispensed by the priests, and afterwards by those who practised medicine, alchemy, and astrology, during the middle ages, when medical practice was mainly composed of a mixture of white magic, witchcraft, and religion.
An amulet consisted of an object in wood, stone, or metal, carved or painted; also certain words or signs, written or spoken, which were supposed to possess some mysterious virtue or hidden property, and avert disease and death from the wearer. The word means something that is suspended from the neck, or bound round a part of the body, to strengthen it; to drive off disease or poison, bringing about certain results of a peculiar character, and invested with supernatural virtues. Portions of animals and herbs were also used for this purpose. Talismans were objects, usually of metal or one of the precious stones, worn about the person to ward off danger, ill-luck, or the evil eye, as well as for their supposed medicinal virtues.