diluted
by the subtle speculations of Galen, reinforced by the curious comments
of the Arabian schoolmen as they were conveyed in the mellifluous
language of Fernelius, blended, it may be, with something of the lofty
mysticism of Van Helmont, and perhaps stealing a flavor of that earlier
form of Homoeopathy which had lately come to light in Sir Kenelm Digby's
"Discourse concerning the Cure of Wounds by the Sympathetic Powder."

His Pathology was mythology. A malformed foetus, as the readers of
Winthrop's Journal may remember, was enough to scare the colonists from
their propriety, and suggest the gravest fears of portended disaster.
The student of the seventeenth century opened his Licetus and saw
figures of a lion with the head of a woman, and a man with the head of
an elephant. He had offered to his gaze, as born of a human mother,
the effigy of a winged cherub, a pterocephalous specimen, which our
Professor of Pathological Anatomy would hardly know whether to treat
with the reverence due to its celestial aspect, or to imprison in one of
his immortalizing jars of alcohol.

His pharmacopoeia consisted mainly of simples, such as the venerable
"Herball" of Gerard describes and figures in abounding affluence. St.
John's wort and Clown's All-heal, with Spurge and Fennel, Saffron and
Parsley, Elder and Snake-root, with opium in some form, and roasted
rhubarb and the Four Great Cold Seeds, and the two Resins, of which it
used to be said that whatever the Tacamahaca has not cured, the Caranna
will, with the more familiar Scammony and Jalap and Black Hellebore,
made up a good part of his probable list of remedies. He would have
ordered Iron now and then, and possibly an occasional dose of Antimony.
He would perhaps have had a rheumatic patient wrapped in the skin of a
wolf or a wild cat, and in case of a malignant fever with "purples" or
petechiae, or of an obstinate king's evil, he might have prescribed
a certain black powder, which had been made by calcining toads in
an earthen pot; a choice remedy, taken internally, or applied to any
outward grief.

Except for the toad-powder and the peremptory drastics, one might have
borne up against this herb doctoring as well as against some more modern
styles of medication. Barbeyrac and his scholar Sydenham had not yet
cleansed the Pharmacopoeia of its perilous stuff, but there is no doubt
that the more sensible physicians of that day knew well enough that a
good honest herb-tea wh