Herbal Simples: Approved for Modern uses of Cure

-From primitive times the term “Herbal Simple” has been applied to any homely curative remedy consisting of one ingredient only, and that of a vegetable nature. Many such a native medicine found favour and success with our single-minded forefathers, this being the “ reverent simplicity of ancienter times.” Healing by herbs has always been popular both with the classic nations of old, and with the British islanders of more recent times. Two hundred and sixty years before the date of Hippocrates (460 B.C.) the prophet Isaiah bade King Hezekiah, when sick unto death, “ take a lump of Figs, and lay it on the boil; and straightway the king recovered.” In Shakespeare’s time there was a London street, named Bucklersbury (near the present Mansion House), noted for its number of druggists who sold Simples and sweet-smelling herbs. Various British herbalists have produced works, more or less learned and voluminous, about our native medicinal plants;Out Herbal Simples are fairly entitled at last to independent promotion from the shelves of the amateur still-room, from the rustic ventures of the village grandam, and from the shallow practices of self styled botanical doctors in the back streets of our cities.