omy.

158. ULMUS montana. BROAD-LEAVED ELM.--This has not been considered of
so great value as the common sort, but it is of much more free growth;
and I have been informed that in the West of England the timber has been
found to be good and lasting.

* * * * *

SECT. VII.--PLANTS USEFUL IN MEDICINE.

The initial letters in this class distinguish the Pharmacopoeia in which
each plant is inserted.

"By the wise and unchangeable laws of Nature established by a Being
infinitely good and infinitely powerful,--not only man, the lord of the
creation, 'fair form who wears sweet smiles, and looks erect on heaven,'
but every subordinate being becomes subject to decay and death: pain and
disease, the inheritance of mortality, usually accelerate his
dissolution. To combat these, to alleviate when it has not the power to
avert, Medicine, honoured art! comes to our assistance.

"It will not be expected that we should here give a history of this
ancient practice, or draw a parallel betwixt the success of former
physicians and those of modern times: all that concerns us to remark is,
that the ancients were infinitely more indebted to the vegetable kingdom
for the materials of their art than the moderns. Not so well acquainted
with the oeconomy of nature, which teaches us that plants were chiefly
destined for the food of various animals, they sought in every herb some
latent healing virtue, and frequently endeavoured to make up the want of
efficacy in one by the combination of numbers: hence the extreme length
of their farraginous prescriptions. More enlightened ideas of the
operations of medicine have taught the moderns greater simplicity and
conciseness in practice. Perhaps there is a danger that this simplicity
may be carried to far, and become finally detrimental to the practice."

The above is quoted from the Preface to a Catalogue of Medicinal Plants
published by my predecessor in 1783: and it may be observed, that the
medical student has, at the present season, a still less number of
plants to store up in memory, owing, probably, to the great advances
that chemistry has made in the mean time, through which mineral articles
in many instances have superseded those of the vegetable kingdom. But,
nevertheless, as Dr. Woodville has justly observed, "it would be
difficult to show that this preference is supported by any conclusive
reasoning drawn from a comparative superiority of the form