During the reigns of Edward the Sixth and Mary, Dr. William
Bulleyn ranked high as a physician and botanist. He wrote the first
_Boke of Simples_, which remains among the most interesting
literary productions of that era as a record of his acuteness and
learning. It advocates the exclusive employment of our native
herbal medicines. Again, Nicholas Culpeper, "student in physick,"
whose name is still a household word with many a plain thinking
English person, published in 1652, for the benefit of the
Commonwealth, his "Compleat Method whereby a man may cure
himself being sick, for threepence charge, with such things only as
grow in England, they being most fit for English bodies."
Likewise in 1696 the Honourable Richard Boyle, F.R.S., published
"_A Collection of Choice, Safe, and Simple English Remedies_,
easily prepared, very useful in families, and fitted for
the service of country people."

Once more, the noted John Wesley gave to the world in 1769 an
admirable little treatise on _Primitive Physic, or an Easy and
Natural Method for Curing most Diseases_; the medicines on
which he chiefly relied being our native plants. For asthma, he
advised the sufferer to "live a fortnight on boiled Carrots only";
for "baldness, to wash the head with a decoction of Boxwood"; [9]
for "blood-spitting to drink the juice of Nettles"; for "an open
cancer, to take freely of Clivers, or Goosegrass, whilst covering
the sore with the bruised leaves of this herb"; and for an ague, to
swallow at stated times "six middling pills of Cobweb."

In Wesley's day tradition only, with shrewd guesses and close
observation, led him to prescribe these remedies. But now we have
learnt by patient chemical research that the Wild Carrot possesses
a particular volatile oil, which promotes copious expectoration for
the relief of asthmatic cough; that the Nettle is endowed in its
stinging hairs with "formic acid," which avails to arrest bleeding;
that Boxwood yields "buxine," a specific stimulant to those nerves
of supply which command the hair bulbs; that Goosegrass or
Clivers is of astringent benefit in cancer, because of its "tannic,"
"citric," and "rubichloric acids"; and that the Spider's Web is of
real curative value in ague, because it affords an albuminous
principle "allied to and isomeric with quinine."

Long before this middle era in medicine, during quite primitive
British times, the name and office of "Leeches" were familiar to
the people as t