Family Herbal - Electric Scotland

iv. INTRODUCTION.
ladies who give medicines to their sick
neighbours,
for a great deal of their business ; for out
of little disorders they make great ones. This
may be the case where their shops supply the
means ; for chemical medicines, and some of the
drugs brought from abroad, arc not to be trusted
with those who have not great experience ; hut
there will be no danger of this kind, when the
fields are the suppl}'. This is the medicine of na
lure, and as it is more efficacious in most cases
it is more safe in ail. If opium may be dangerous
in an unexperienced hand, the lady who will
give in its place
a syrup of the wild lettuce,
(a plant not known in common practice at this
time, but recommended from experience in this
and that
treatise^) will find that it will ease pain,
it will cause sleep, in the manner of that foreign drug,
but she will never find any ill consequences from
it: and the same migh! be said in many other in
stances.
As the descriptions in this work, very readily
distinguish what are* the real plants that should he
used, the great care will remain, in what manner
to gather and preserve, and in what manner
to give them it will he useful to add a ; chap-
ter or two on those heads. As to the former, I
would have it perfectly understood, because a great
deal depends upon it ; the latter cannot easily be mis-
taken.
Having displaced the dings brought from
abroad in a great measure from this charitable
I
practice, would have every lady, who has the
spirit of this true benevolence, keep a kind of
druggist's shop of her own : this should he supplied
from the neighbouring fields, and from her
garden. There is no reason the drugs should not
be as well preserved, and as carefully laid up,