(π) The herb Violet (_Viola odorata_), made into an unguent with lard or honey, cures wounds. (ρ) The herb Wildgourd (_Cucumis colocynthus_, κολοκύνθος ἀγρía), its inward neshness pounded in lithe beer without the churnels, will stir the inward. Those are Simples, _i.e._, medicaments derived from single herbs, easily come-by, within the reach of all; suited to a simple, but by no means silly, race of men content with simple things, gifted with faith and sense, and unconcerned to dive below the surface and explore, or experiment with, nature’s sacrosanct arcana. * * * * * The Renascence of Learning, when the works of ancient writers were rediscovered, devoured, put in practice, filled men’s minds with new ideas, and completely changed their point of view. _The Most Salubrious Precepts of Medicine_ written by Quintus Serenus Sermonicus in the Third Century; the Thirty Seven Books of _Natural History_ by C. Plinius Secundus (Pliny Senior) which first saw light in A.D. 77; the eighty-three _Treatises_ of Claudius Galenus, (A.D. 130–200); the thirty-four chapters of the _Animal Medicaments_ which Sextus Placitus wrote in the Fourth Century after the Incarnation; the eight books of Alexandros of Tralles in Lydia, _On Medicine_, first given to the world in the Sixth Century;—these were the keys that opened the door of speculation to the alert and eager men of the Fifteenth Century, already intoxicated by the glorious Discovery of Man. Weird and wonderful effects were produced by this flood of knowledge. Weird and wonderful were the new significances given to natural things, the combinations of natural objects projected, the doctrines evolved from observation of natural phenomena. The study of nature became a sacred thing, reserved for the reverent and wise. Its followers were called magi, or magicians; their pursuit was magic. The magical art was either white or black, for the good or ill of men. Great and holy personages practised white magic: the black was damned by the Church, and the bare suspicion of its practice sufficed to burn. The Lord Alexander P.P. VI distinguished Himself by His severity to the black magi. White magic included the art of healing; divination by cheiromancy, amniomancy, lithomancy, astrology, and also experimented to find out the hidden properties and virtues of all things strange, as well as common. It was a vast field for research; and the men who walked therein were just like boys, eager, sensible, ardent, inexperienced, ready to assume and take for granted.