Charity began at home--I speak of Charity Shaw, the famous root and herb doctress, who was a great blessing to all undertakers, in this city, for many years--her practice was, at first, purely domestic--she began at home, in her own household; and, had she ended there, it had fared better, doubtless, with many, who have received the final attentions of our craft. The mischief of quackery is negative, as well as positive. Charity could not be fairly classed with those reckless empirics, who, rather than lose the sale of a nostrum, will send you directly to the devil, for a dollar: Charity was kind, though she vaunted herself a little in the newspapers. She was, now and then, rather severely handled, but she bore all things, and endured all things, and hoped all things; for, to do her justice, she was desirous, that her patients should recover: and, if she believed not all things, her patients did; and therein consisted the negative mischief--in that stupid credulity, which led them to follow this poor, ignorant, old woman, and thus prevented them, from applying for relief, where, if anywhere, in this uncertain world, it may be found--at the fountains of knowledge and experience. In Charity's day, there were several root and herb practitioners; but the greatest of these was Charity. Herb doctors have, for some two thousand years, attempted to turn back the tables, upon the faculty--they are a species of _garde mobile_, who have an old grudge against the _corps regulier_: for they have not forgotten, that, some two thousand years ago, herb doctors had all things pretty much in their own way. Two entire books, the twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh of Pliny's Natural History, are devoted to a consideration of the medicinal properties of herbs--the twentieth treats of the medicinal properties of vegetables--the twenty-third and twenty-fourth of the medicinal properties of roots and barks. Thus, we see, of what importance these simples were accounted, in the healing art, in that early age. Herbs, barks, and roots were, and, for ages, had been, the principal _materia medica_, and were employed, by the different sects--by the Rationalists, of whom Pliny, lib. xxvi. cap. 6, considers Herophilus the head, though this honor is ascribed, by Galen, to Hippocrates--the Empirics, or experimentalists--and the Methodics, who avoided all actions, for _mala praxis_, by adhering to the rules. Pliny manifestly inclined to herb doctoring. In the chapter, just now referred to, after alluding to the _verba, garrulitatemque_ of certain lecturers, he intimates, that they and their pupils had an easy time of it--_sedere namque his in scholis auditioni operatos gratius erat, quam ire in solitudines, et quoerere herbas alias aliis diebus anni_--for it was pleasanter to sit, listening in the lecture-rooms, than to run about in the fields and woods, culling certain simples, on certain days in the year.