The Author of Adam in Eden refers to Oswald Crollius as “the great discoverer of signatures,” and no doubt has drawn from him, most of his remarks upon this theory of physical correspondence. The resemblance is in some cases very obvious; but in many more the Swedenborgian correspondences are not more fantastic; and where the resemblances exist the inference is purely theoretical.
Walnuts are said to have the perfect signature of the head; the outer husks or green covering represents the pericranium, or outward skin of the skull, whereon the hair groweth,—and therefore salt made of those husks is exceeding good for wounds in the head. The inner woody shell hath the signature of the skull, and the little yellow skin or peel, that of the dura and pia mater which are the thin scarfs that envelope the brain. The kernel hath “the very figure of the brain, and therefore it is very profitable for the brain and resists poisons.” So too the Piony, being not yet blown, was thought to have “some signature and proportion with the head of man, having sutures and little veins dispersed up and down, like unto those which environ the brain: when the flowers blow they open an outward little skin representing the skull:” the piony therefore besides its other virtues was very available against the falling sickness. Poppy heads with their crowns somewhat represent the head and brain, and therefore decoctions of them were used with good success in several diseases of the head. And Lillies of the Valley, which in Coles's days grew plentifully upon Hampstead-heath, were known by signature to cure the apoplexy; “for as that disease is caused by the dropping of humours into the principal ventricles of the brain, so the flowers of this lilly hanging on the plants as if they were drops, are of wonderful use herein.”
All capillary herbs were of course sovereign in diseases of the hair; and because the purple and yellow spots and stripes upon the flowers of Eyebright very much resemble the appearance of diseased eyes, it was found out by that signature that this herb was very effectual “for curing of the same.” The small Stone-crop hath the signature of the gums, and is therefore good for scurvy. The exquisite Crollius observed that the woody scales of which the cones of the pine tree are composed, resemble the fore teeth; and therefore pine leaves boiled in vinegar make a gargle which relieves the tooth-ache. The Pomegranate has a like virtue for a like reason. Thistles and Holly leaves signify by their prickles that they are excellent for pleurisy and stiches in the side. Saxifrage manifesteth in its growth its power of breaking the stone. It had been found experimentally that all roots, barks and flowers which were yellow, cured the yellow jaundice; and though Kidney beans as yet were only used for food, yet having so perfect a signature, practitioners in physic were exhorted to take it into consideration and try whether there were not in this plant some excellent faculty to cure nephritic diseases. In pursuing this fantastic system examples might be shown of that mischief, which, though it may long remain latent, never fails at some time or other to manifest itself as inherent in all error and falsehood.
When the mistresses of families grounded their practice of physic upon such systems of herbary, or took it from books which contained prescriptions like those before adduced, (few being either more simple or more rational,) Dr. Green might well argue that when he mounted his hobby and rode out seeking adventures as a Physician-Errant, he went forth for the benefit of his fellow creatures. The guidance of such works, or of their own traditional receipts, the people in fact then generally followed. Burton tells us that Paulus Jovius in his description of Britain, and Levinus Lemnius have observed, of this our island, how there was of old no use of physic amongst us, and but little at this day, except he says “it be for a few nice idle citizens, surfeiting courtiers, and stall-fed gentlemen lubbers. The country people use kitchen physic.” There are two instances among the papers of the Berkeley family, of the little confidence which persons of rank placed upon such medical advice and medicinal preparations as could be obtained in the country, and even in the largest of our provincial cities. In the second year of Elizabeth's reign Henry Lord Berkeley “having extremely heated himself by chasing on foot a tame deer in Yate Park, with the violence thereof fell into an immoderate bleeding of the nose, to stay which, by the ill counsel of some about him, he dipt his whole face into a bason of cold water, whereby,” says the family chronicler, “that flush and fulness of his nose which forthwith arose could never be remedied, though for present help he had Physicians in a few days from London, and for better help came thither himself not long after to have the advice of the whole College, and lodged with his mother at her house in Shoe-lane.”—He never afterwards could sing with truth or satisfaction the old song,
| Nose, Nose, jolly red Nose, And what gave thee that jolly red Nose? Cinnamon and Ginger, Nutmegs and Cloves, And they gave me this jolly red Nose. |
A few years later, “Langham an Irish footman of this Lord, upon the sickness of the Lady Catherine, this Lord's wife, carried a letter from Callowdon to old Dr. Fryer, a physician dwelling in Little Britain in London; and returned with a glass bottle in his hand compounded by the doctor for the recovery of her health, a journey of an hundred and forty-eight miles performed by him in less than forty-two hours, notwithstanding his stay of one night at the physician's and apothecary's houses, which no one horse could have so well and safely performed.” No doubt it was for the safer conveyance of the bottle, that a footman was sent on this special errand, for which the historian of that noble family adds, “the lady shall after give him a new suit of cloaths.”
In those days, and long after, they who required remedies were likely to fare ill, under their own treatment, or that of their neighbours; and worse under the travelling quack, who was always an ignorant and impudent impostor, but found that human sufferings and human credulity afforded him a never-failing harvest. Dr. Green knew this: he did not say with the Romish priest populus vult decipi, et decipietur! for he had no intention of deceiving them; but he saw that many were to be won by buffoonery, more by what is called palaver, and almost all by pretensions. Condescending therefore to the common arts of quackery, he employed his man Kemp to tickle the multitude with coarse wit; but he stored himself with the best drugs that were to be procured, distributed as general remedies such only as could hardly be misapplied and must generally prove serviceable; and brought to particular cases the sound knowledge which he had acquired in the school of Boerhaave, and the skill which he had derived from experience aided by natural sagacity. When it became convenient for him to have a home, he established himself at Penrith, in the County of Cumberland, having married a lady of that place; but he long continued his favourite course of life and accumulated in it a large fortune. He gained it by one maggot, and reduced it by many: nevertheless there remained a handsome inheritance for his children. His son proved as maggotty as the father, ran through a good fortune, and when confined in the King's Bench prison for debt, wrote a book upon the Art of cheap living in London!
The father's local fame, though it has not reached to the third and fourth generation, survived him far into the second; and for many years after his retirement from practice, and even after his death every travelling mountebank in the northern counties adopted the name of Dr. Green.
At the time to which this chapter refers, Dr. Green was in his meridian career, and enjoyed the highest reputation throughout the sphere of his itinerancy. Ingleton lay in his rounds, and whenever he came there he used to send for the schoolmaster to pass the evening with him. He was always glad if he could find an opportunity also of conversing with the elder Daniel, as the Flossofer of those parts. William Dove could have communicated to him more curious things relating to his own art; but William kept out of the presence of strangers, and had happily no ailments to make him seek the Doctor's advice; his occasional indispositions were but slight, and he treated them in his own way. That way was sometimes merely superstitious, sometimes it was whimsical, and sometimes rough. If his charms failed when he tried them upon himself, it was not for want of faith. When at any time it happened that one of his eyes was blood-shot, he went forthwith in search of some urchin whose mother, either for laziness, or in the belief that it was wholesome to have it in that state, allowed his ragged head to serve as a free warren for certain “small deer.” One of these hexapeds William secured, and “using him as if he loved him,” put it into his eye; when according to William's account the insect fed upon what it found, cleared the eye, and disappearing he knew not where or how, never was seen more.
His remedy for the cholic was a pebble posset; white pebbles were preferred, and of these what was deemed a reasonable quantity was taken in some sort of milk porridge. Upon the same theory he sometimes swallowed a pebble large enough as he said to clear all before it; and for that purpose they have been administered of larger calibre than any bolus that ever came from the hands of the most merciless apothecary, as large indeed sometimes as a common sized walnut. Does the reader hesitate at believing this of an ignorant man, living in a remote part of the country? Well might William Dove be excused, for a generation later than his John Wesley prescribed in his Primitive Physic quicksilver, to be taken ounce by ounce, to the amount of one, two, or three pounds, till the desired effect was produced. And a generation earlier, Richard Baxter of happy memory and unhappy digestion, having read in Dr. Gerhard “the admirable effects of the swallowing of a gold bullet upon his father,” in a case which Baxter supposed to be like his own, got a gold bullet of between twenty and thirty shillings weight, and swallowed it. “Having taken it,” says he, “I knew not how to be delivered of it again. I took clysters and purges for about three weeks, but nothing stirred it; and a gentleman having done the like, the bullet never came from him till he died, and it was cut out. But at last my neighbours set a day apart to fast and pray for me, and I was freed from my danger in the beginning of that day!”