It is natural to suppose that many such things would happen, and we know as a fact that they have so happened in numberless instances. Probably empirical medicine, in the most ancient times and amongst the most savage tribes, had an armoury of weapons against pain and sickness not greatly inferior to our own Materia Medica. The origin of the use of most of our valuable medicines cannot be discovered. “As no man can say who it was that first invented the use of clothes and houses against the inclemency of the weather, so also can no investigation point out the origin of medicine—mysterious as the sources of the Nile. There has never been a time when it was not.”[87] The origin of surgery is probably much older than that of medicine, if by the term surgery we mean the application of herbs to wounds, either as bandages or on account of their healing properties, and the use of medicinal baths the like. Mr. Gladstone, in an address to a society of herbalists, which was reported in the _Daily News_, 27th March, 1890, said that an accident which occurred to himself, when cutting down a tree, illustrated the very beginning of the healing art. He cut his finger with the axe, and found that he had no handkerchief with him with which to bind up the wound, so he took a leaf of the tree nearest to him, and fastened it round his injured finger. The bleeding stopped at once, and the wound, he declared, healed much more quickly and favourably than previous injuries treated in a more scientific manner. There is no doubt whatever that this is a good example of the primitive manner of treating cuts and other flesh wounds. The cooling properties of leaves would be recognised by the most primitive peoples; and as a cut or other wound, by the process of inflammation, at once begins to burn and throb, a cooling leaf would be the most natural thing to apply. Some leaves which possess styptic and resinous properties would staunch bleeding very effectually, and the mere act of binding round the cut an application like a leaf would serve to draw together the edges of the wound, and afford an antiseptic plaster of the most scientific nature. It was, in fact, by just such means that the valuable styptic properties of the matico leaves were first discovered by Europeans.