The botanic family physician, or the secret of curing diseases with vegetable proportions : also containing divers formulas or recipes / by L. Sperry.

  • Sperry, L.
Date:
1843
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The botanic family physician, or the secret of curing diseases with vegetable proportions : also containing divers formulas or recipes / by L. Sperry. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    PREFACE. The ever active and inquiring mind will frequently discover the finger of Providence in the most trivial accident. Thus, a gentleman, walking some years since in a grove of Pines, at a time when a dis- temper prevailed causing little pits, or sores, on the mouth, observ- ed a drop of natural gum fall from the tree into the book which he was perusing ; this he took up and thoughtlessly applied it to one of the small sores; finding the pain to cease, he applied it to another with the same happy effect. The same remedy he afterwards recom- mended to others; and in no instance, did it fail to effect ajpeedy cure. And doubtless other remedies have been thus casually discover- ed in every age and nation. Thus far, Physic was wholly founded on experiment. The European, as well as the American, said to his neighbor : Are you sick ? Drink the juice of this herb and your sick- ness will be at an end. Are you in a burning heat ? Leap into that river and then sweat until you are well. Has the snake bitten you? Chew and apply that root and the poison will not hurt you. Thus an- cient men having little science, with common sense and common humanity, cured both themselves and their neighbors of most of the distempers to which every nation was subject; but in process of time, discerning men had found in the Mineral Kingdom more sub- tle and active agents, which, notwithstanding their danger, were sub- stituted by the polite nations, until in a course of years the greater part of them were forgotten. Materia Medica took the place of plain common sense, and technicalities obscured the science from common observation. Physicians now began to be looked upon with wonder, admiration, and as almost superhuman. Profit, as well as honor, at- tended their employment, so that they had two weighty reasons for keeping the mysteries of their profession from the public eye. Even the ingenious and learned Doct. Cheyne, who doubtless would have communicated much more to the world but for the reason he gave one of his friends who pressed him with some passage in his work, which too much countenanced the modern practice, says: Oh, sir, we must do something to oblige the Faculty, or they will tear us in pieces.