CHAPTER XII.
Folk Medicine and Leech Craft.
“A certain shepherd lad,
Of small regard to see to, yet well skill’d
In every virtuous plant and healing herb,
That spreads her verdant leaf to th’ morning ray.”
—Comus.
In days gone by, before the invention of Morrison’s pills, Holloway’s ointment, and other infallible remedies, no farm was without its plot of medicinal herbs, skilful combinations of which—secrets handed down from one old wife or village doctor to another—were supposed to be capable of curing all the ills to which poor suffering humanity is heir, to say nothing of the various diseases affecting horses, oxen, swine, and other domestic animals.
Nine varieties of herbs was the number usually cultivated, a number which, like three and seven, is generally supposed to have some occult and mystic virtues. As to the herbs themselves it is not easy at the present day, when old traditions are rapidly passing away, to obtain a correct list of them, but the following is as correct as we can make it.