In Shakespeare's time there was a London street, named Bucklersbury (near the present Mansion House), noted for its number of druggists who sold Simples and sweet-smelling herbs. We read, in [ix] The Merry Wives of Windsor, that Sir John Falstaff flouted the effeminate fops of his day as "Lisping hawthorn buds that smell like Bucklersbury in simple time."
Various British herbalists have produced works, more or less learned and voluminous, about our native medicinal plants; but no author has hitherto radically explained the why and where fore of their ultimate curative action. In common with their early predecessors, these several writers have recognised the healing virtues of the herbs, but have failed to explore the chemical principles on which such virtues depend. Some have attributed the herbal properties to the planets which rule their growth. Others have associated the remedial herbs with certain cognate colours, ordaining red flowers for disorders of the blood, and yellow for those of the liver. "The exorcised demon of jaundice," says Conway, "was consigned to yellow parrots; that of inflammatory disease to scarlet, or red weeds." Again, other herbalists have selected their healing plants on the doctrine of allied signatures, choosing, for instance, the Viper's Bugloss as effectual against venomous bites, because of its resembling a snake; and the sweet little English Eyebright, which shows a dark pupil in the centre white ocular corolla, as of signal benefit for inflamed eyes.
Thus it has continued to happen that until the [x] last half-century Herbal Physic has remained only speculative and experimental, instead of gaining a solid foothold in the field of medical science. Its claims have been merely empirical, and its curative methods those of a blind art:—
"Si vis curari, de morbo nescio quali,
Accipias herbam; sed quale nescio; nec quâ
Ponas; nescio quo; curabere, nescio quando."
Your sore, I know not what, be not foreslow
To cure with herbs, which, where, I do not know;
Place them, well pounc't, I know not how, and then
You shall be perfect whole, I know not when."
Happily now-a-days, as our French neighbours would say, Nous avons changé tout cela, "Old things are passed away; behold all things are become new!" Herbal Simples stand to-day safely determined on sure ground by the help of the accurate chemist. They hold their own with the best, and rank high for homely cures, because of their proved constituents. Their manifest healing virtues are shown to depend on medicinal elements plainly disclosed by analysis. Henceforward the curtain of oblivion must fall on cordial waters distilled mechanically from sweet herbs, and on electuaries artlessly compounded of seeds and roots by a Lady Monmouth, or a Countess of Arundel, as in the Stuart and Tudor times. Our Herbal Simples are fairly entitled at last to independent promotion from the shelves of the amateur still-room, from [xi] the rustic ventures of the village grandam, and from the shallow practices of self styled botanical doctors in the back streets of our cities.
"I do remember an apothecary,—
And hereabouts he dwells,—whom late I noted
In tatter'd weeds, with overwhelming brows,
Culling of Simples; meagre were his looks;
And in his needy shop a tortoise hung,
An alligator stuff'd, and other skins
Of ill-shap'd fishes; and about his shelves
A beggarly account of empty boxes,
Green earthen pots, bladders, and musty seeds,
Remnants of packthread, and old cakes of roses
Were thinly scattered to make up a show."
Romeo and Juliet, Act V. Sc. 1.
Chemically assured, therefore, of the sterling curative powers which our Herbal Simples possess, and anxious to expound them with a competent pen, the present author approaches his task with a zealous purpose, taking as his pattern, from the Comus of Milton:—
"A certain shepherd lad
Of small regard to see to, yet well skilled
In every virtuous plant, and healing herb;
He would beg me sing;
Which, when I did, he on the tender grass
Would sit, and hearken even to constancy;
And in requital ope his leathern scrip,
And show me Simples, of a thousand names,
Telling their strange, and vigorous faculties."
Shakespeare said, three centuries ago, "throw physic to the dogs." But prior to him, one Doctor Key, self styled Caius, had written in the Latin [xii] tongue (tempore Henry VIII.), a Medical History of the British Canine Race. His book became popular, though abounding in false concords; insomuch that from then until now medical classics have been held by scholars in poor repute for grammar, and sound construction. Notwithstanding which risk, many a passage is quoted here of ancient Herbal lore in the past tongues of Greece, Rome; and the Gauls. It is fondly hoped that the apt lines thus borrowed from old faultless sources will escape reproach for a defective modern rendering in Dog Latin, Mongrel Greek, or the "French of Stratford atte bowe."