It is probable that many disorders, for the relief of which medicines are sought for from the remotest parts of the globe, which act with harshness and violence, would be averted, were the same attention paid to the investigation of the properties, and the best mode of extracting the qualities, incorporated in the leaves, seeds, roots, and juices, together with the balsams, which in some cases exude from them, to be found in the soil of Nature’s platform on which we traverse. There was a time, and not very remote, in the annals of the past, when disorders of the Chest and Lungs, so alarmingly prevalent in the present day, were scarcely known; when Consumptions were seldom heard of; when obstructions of the viscera were hardly ever seen, and when chronic diseases were but rarely witnessed. The reason is obvious: the simples which adorn the pages of our ancient authors on medical science, are no longer resorted to for relief by the student or practitioner, however valuable their properties have heretofore been manifested; and other compounds, emanating from the laboratory, have been preferred, and thus the _simplicity_ of the science has been gradually lost in its complications. The design of the present treatise is to attempt the restoration of the good old ancient mode of cure, now obsolete; particularly as regards pulmonary complaints, which, in this our variable climate, are unhappily so abundant and fatal. All the information, needful to exhibit to the sufferer the dangers frequently arising from the neglect of what is called a common cold; and of the means whereby its course may be nipped in the very bud, and its more direful effects removed in its latent stages, and other matter of general importance is advanced; which, while it becomes a friendly beacon to warn him of danger, will at once point to a safe and salutary, and not less certain than salutary remedy.