the cause of its supposed sufferings, bored a hole in the trunk.  After this operation it ceased to groan, it was rooted up, but nothing appeared to account for its strange peculiarity.  Stories of this kind remind us of similar wonders recorded by Sir John Maundeville, as having been seen by him in the course of his Eastern travels.  Thus he describes a certain table of ebony or blackwood, “that once used to turn into flesh on certain occasions, but whence now drops only oil, which, if kept above a year, becomes good flesh and bone.”

Footnotes: 

1.  Laing’s “History of Scotland,” 1800, ii. p.  II.

2.  “Flower-lore,” p. 46.

CHAPTER XVI.

DOCTRINE OF SIGNATURES.

The old medical theory, which supposed that plants by their external character indicated the particular diseases for which Nature had intended them as remedies, was simply a development of the much older notion of a real connection between object and image.  Thus, on this principle, it was asserted that the properties of substances were frequently denoted by their colour; hence, white was regarded as refrigerant, and red as hot.  In the same way, for disorders of the blood, burnt purple, pomegranate seeds, mulberries, and other red ingredients were dissolved in the patient’s drink; and for liver complaints yellow substances were recommended.  But this fanciful and erroneous notion “led to serious errors in practice,” [1] and was occasionally productive of the most fatal results.  Although, indeed, Pliny spoke of the folly of the magicians in using the catanance (Greek:  katanhankae, compulsion) for love-potions, on account of its shrinking “in drying into the shape of the claws of a dead kite,” [2] and so holding the patient fast; yet this primitive idea, after the lapse of centuries, was as fully credited as in the early days when it was originally started.  Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, for instance, it is noticed in most medical works, and in many cases treated with a seriousness characteristic of the backward state of medical science even at a period so comparatively recent.  Crollius wrote a work on the subject; and Langham, in his “Garden of Health,” published in the year 1578, accepted the doctrine.  Coles, in his “Art of Simpling” (1656), thus describes it:—­

“Though sin and Satan have plunged mankind into an ocean of infirmities, yet the mercy of God, which is over all His workes, maketh grasse to growe upon the mountains and herbes for the use of men, and hath not only stamped upon them a distinct forme, but also given them particular signatures, whereby a man may read even in legible characters the use of them.”

John Ray, in his treatise on “The Wisdom of God in Creation,” was among the first to express his disbelief of this idea, and writes:—­“As for the signatures of plants, or the notes impressed