IF we look back to the time when all men and women were mere savages, living like the Esquimaux or the Australians of to-day, then it is certain that every person was much interested in plants. Nothing was so interesting as daily food, because no one was ever certain of even one good meal in the day.
So that in those early times there was a very sound, well-grounded knowledge of roots, bulbs, and fruits. They knew all that were good to eat, all that could possibly be eaten in time of famine and starvation, and also every poisonous and unwholesome plant.
Some savage genius must have discovered that certain plants were "good medicine"; that certain tree-barks helped to check fever, and that others were worth trying when people had successfully devoured more than they could comfortably digest. The life of a savage meant tremendous meals, followed by days of starvation; even now, when young children are fed on rice in India, a thread is tied round their waist, and, when this bursts, they are not allowed to eat any more.
Very probably some of these early physicians were lady doctors usually of a certain age. Men were too busy with their hunting and warfare to have time to try experiments with drugs, to make concoctions of herbs all more or less disquieting and to find out if these were of any use.
So that such medicine-men or witches gradually came to understand enough about poisons or fruits to make themselves respected and even feared. They would, no doubt, make botanical excursions in the forest, accompanied by their pupils, in order to point out the poisonous and useful drugs.
It is worth noting, in passing, that this habit of botanical professors going on excursions with medical students has persisted down to our own times, probably without any break in the continuity.
But it was soon found advisable to make this knowledge secret and difficult to get. They did not really know so very much, and a mysterious, solemn manner and a quantity of horrible and unusual objects placed about the hut[4] would perhaps prevent some irate and impatient savage patient from throwing a spear at his wizard—or witch-doctor.
Shakespeare alludes to this in Macbeth. "Scale of Dragon; tooth of wolf; witches' mummy; maw and gulf of the ravin'd salt sea shark; root of hemlock digg'd i' the dark; ... gall of goat and slips of yew"; and so on.
Most of their cures were faith-cures, and they were, no doubt, much more likely to be successful when the patient believed he was being treated with some dreadful stew of all sorts of wonderful and horrible materials.
This explains how it was that the knowledge of medicine became so mixed up with pure charlatanism and swindling that no man could tell which drugs were of real use and which were mere ornaments giving piquancy and flavour to the prescription. It is not possible to say that a snake's head, the brain of a toad, the gall of a crocodile, and the whiskers of a tiger, were all of them absolutely useless. Within the last few years it has been found that an antidote to snake-bite can be obtained from a decoction of part of the snake itself, and it has also been discovered that small quantities of virulent poisons are amongst our most valuable and powerful remedies.