Chronicle and Romance: Froissart, Malory, Holinshed: (The Harvard Classics Series)
History
Chronicle and Romance: Froissart, Malory, Holinshed: (The Harvard Classics Series)
England -- Social life and customs -- 16th century; Great Britain -- History -- Edward III, 1327-1377
For my part, I doubt not if the use of outlandish drugs had not
blinded our physicians of England in times past, but that the virtues
of our simples here at home would have been far better known, and so
well unto us as those of India are to the practitioners of those
parts, and thereunto be found more profitable for us than the foreign
either are or may be. This also will I add, that even those which are
most common by reason of their plenty, and most vile because of their
abundance, are not without some universal and special efficacy, if it
were known, for our benefit: sith God in nature hath so disposed his
creatures that the most needful are the most plentiful and serving for
such general diseases as our constitution most commonly is affected
withal. Great thanks therefore be given unto the physicians of our age
and country, who not only endeavour to search out the use of such
simples as our soil doth yield and bring forth, but also to procure
such as grow elsewhere, upon purpose so to acquaint them with our
clime that they in time, through some alteration received from the
nature of the earth, may likewise turn to our benefit and commodity
and be used as our own.
The chief workman (or, as I may call him, the founder of this device)
is Carolus Clusius, the noble herbarist whose industry hath
wonderfully stirred them up into this good act. For albeit that
Matthiolus, Rembert, Lobell, and others have travelled very far in
this behalf, yet none hath come near to Clusius, much less gone
further in the finding and true descriptions of such herbs as of late
are brought to light. I doubt not but, if this man were in England but
one seven years, he would reveal a number of herbs growing with us
whereof neither our physicians nor apothecaries as yet have any
knowledge. And even like thanks be given unto our nobility, gentlemen,
and others, for their continual nutriture and cherishing of such
homeborne and foreign simples in their gardens: for hereby they shall
not only be had at hand and preserved, but also their forms made more
familiar to be discerned and their forces better known than hitherto
they have been.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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