The old herbalists used so many herbs and found each one good for so many disorders that one is filled with wonder that patients ever died, till one examines into the prescriptions and methods generally, and then one is more astonished that any of them recovered. I shall not mention any prescriptions here, excepting the celebrated antidote to all poison, Venice Treacle. This included seventy-three ingredients, and was evolved from an earlier and also famous nostrum, the Mithridaticum, originated by Mithridates, King of Pontus. Of course, this “treacle” was in no way connected with the sugary syrup we call by this name, but is a corruption of the Latin—Theriaca, a counter poison. Venice Treacle is an extreme example of the multitude of conflicting elements that were massed together and boldly administered in ancient remedies. The memory of it still clings about a wayside plant, Erysimum cheiranthoides, better known as Treacle-Mustard, which has gained its English name from the fact that its seeds were used in this awe-inspiring compound.
CHELSEA PHYSIC GARDEN
Anyone who is interested in ancient remedies can easily gain much information from Culpepper or Salmon. Either herbal can be procured at a low price (in a cheap edition) from any second-hand bookseller, and Salmon’s wild statements, especially about animals, and Culpepper’s biting wit, make them amusing reading. It is more instructive to examine the principles that animated the practice, and from one, the Doctrine of Signatures took form—a doctrine widely believed in, and of great influence. Coles[94] expounds it with great clearness: “Though Sin and Sattan have plunged mankinde into an Ocean of Infirmities... yet the mercy of God, which is over all His workes, maketh ... herbes for the use of man, and hath not onely stamped upon them a distinct forme, but also given them particular Signatures, whereby a man may read, even in legible characters, the use of them.... Viper’s Bugloss hath its stalks all to be speckled like a snake or viper, and is a most singular remedy against poyson and the sting of scorpions.... Heart Trefoyle is so called, not onely because the leafe is triangular, like the heart of a man, but also because each leafe contains the perfection of the heart, and that in its proper colour, viz., in flesh colour. It defendeth the heart.... The leaves of Saint John’s Wort seem to be pricked or pinked very thick with little holes like the pores of a man’s skin. It is a soveraigne remedy for any cut in the skin.” This was a view very generally shared. William Browne says:
In physic by some signature
Nature herself doth point us out a cure.
[94] “Art of Simpling.”
And again:
Heaven hath made me for thy cure,
Both the physician and the signature.
Br. Pastorals, book iii.
Drayton’s Hermit pursued a development of this theory. He merely accepted the conclusions of earlier authorities who had made discoveries about the properties of plants and had named them accordingly.