The isolation of plantation life made it doubly difficult to depend on doctors, and as a result, each family had its own medicine-chest, and its own recipes and prescriptions handed down from generation to generation, and brought oftentimes from across the sea. Herbs played an important part in the pharmacopoeia, both because they were easily obtained, and because tradition endowed them with mysterious virtues. An old medical treatise assures its readers that "Nature has stamped on divers plants legible characters to discover their uses"; that baldness may be cured by hanging-moss, and freckles by spotted plants. Ragwort, and periwinkle, and Solomon's Seal all had their special merits; but sage was prime favorite, and its votary declares it a question how one who grows it in his garden and uses it freely can ever die. Next to ease of preparation, the prime requisite of a medicine was strength. Violent purges and powerful doses of physic or of "The Bark" were always in favor. The simple ailments of childhood were dosed with such abominations as copperas and pewter-filings, and these unhappy infants were fed on beverages of snake-root or soot-tea. One vile compound, common as it was odious, was _snail pottage_, made of garden shell-snails washed in small beer, mixed with earth-worms, and then fried in a concoction of ale, herbs, spices, and drugs. Yet our ancestors knew how to brew good-tasting things. The letter book of Francis Jerdone, of Yorktown, Virginia, records under date 1746, "A receit how to make Burlington's Universal Balsam. Balsam Peru 1 oz. Best Storax 2 oz. Benjamin, impregnated with sweet Almonds 3 oz. Alloes Succatrinx 1/2 oz. Myrrh Elect 1/2 oz. Purest Frankincense 1/2 oz. Roots of Angelica 1/2 oz. Flowers of St. John Wort 1/2 oz. One pint of the best Spirit of Wine. To be bottled up and Set in the Sun for 20 or 30 days together, to be shaken twice or thrice a day. Take about 30 drops going to bed in Tea made of pennyroyal, Balm or Speer mint." This prescription has the great defect of being too good, and might have a tendency to tempt the young to acquire the disease in order to be treated to the remedy. _Angelic Snuff_ was another agreeable medicament, warranted to cure all head troubles and help the palsy, megrims, deafness, apoplexy, and gout. What a pity that only the name of this cure remains to our generation, whose megrims alone would empty so many boxes of the invaluable snuff!