Introduction - Uppsala Monitoring Centre

Figure 7. The Expert Doctor’s Dispensatory. © Wellcome Images
The Expert Doctors Dispensatory says in its introduction concerning
drugs: ‘They must be safe, that if they do no remedy they may no
wise predjudice the party, although in desperate diseases desperate
medicines may be used with an exquisite judgement.’
Black hellebore: ‘Where note, that black hellebore rightly used is a
hurtles medicine and may be safely be give to children, have
a care with women with child or other weak bodies.‘ (identical
words to those used by Culpeper in 1652).
Nature’s Cabinet Unlock’d, wherein is discovered the natural causes
of metals, stones, precious earths, juices, humors, and spirits’ by Sir
Thomas Browne, Dr of Physick. ‘Some plants are enemies,
pernicious and hurtful, and that either to the whole body, or part: to
the whole they prove fatal, by everting the continuity of union, and
depraving of life, or stupefy or benumb part of the body: as Henbane
to the head…. One and the same plant, is sometimes salutary to one