Botanic guide to health, and the natural pathology of disease / by A.I. Coffin.

  • Coffin, A. I. (Albert Isaiah)
Date:
[1855]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Botanic guide to health, and the natural pathology of disease / by A.I. Coffin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    101/416 (page 71)
    manner received, concerning the manner of heal- ing both outward hurts and the diseases incident to the climate, and the medicines, which were of the greatest efficacy for the cure of each disorder. It is certain that this is the method wherein the art of healing is preserved among the American Indians to this day. Their diseases, indeed, are exceedingly few ; nor do they often occur, by reason of their continual exercise and, till of late, universal temperance. But if they are sick, or bit by a serpent, or torn by a wild beast, the fathers immediately tell their cliildren what re- medies to apply, and it is rare that the patient suffers long—those being quick, generally being infallible. Hence it was, perhaps, that the ancients not only of Greece and Rome, but even of barbarous nations, usually assigned physic a divine original; and, indeed, ifc was a natural thought, that he who had taught it to the very beasts and birds, the Cretan stag, the Egyptian Ibis, could not be wanting to teach man. Yea, sometimes even by those meaner creatures, for it was easy to infer, 'if this will heal that creature, whose flesh is nearly of the same texture as mine, then, in a parallel case, it would heal me.' The trial was made, the cure was wrought, and experience and physic grew up together. And has not the author of nature taught us the use of many other medicines by what is vul- garly termed accident? Thus, one walking some years since, in a grove of pines, at a time when many of the neighbouring towns were afflicted