Adherbal

“ From the right rear also there comes a thundering sound as Caius Lælius, with his five thousand Roman cavalry, returning from the pursuit of the Carthaginian horse, falls upon the right flank and rear in turn.
Fight hard now and invoke the gods, ye soldiers of Hannibal! fight hard and strike home, for never again shall ye fight under your beloved leader!
Strike now, Maharbal! strike, Bostar! strike, Hanno! Hamilcar! Adherbal! Strike, all ye captains, for the dying lion’s sake, and if ye must die, see that ye die as becometh your leader’s reputation. A life for a life! die but yield not! ”

“ This man Jugurtha bribed to procure a model of the town keys, which were taken to Hiempsal each evening. Then his men, getting into Thirmida one night, cut off Hiempsal's head and took it to their master. He then proceeded to seize town after town; all the best warriors rallied to his standard, and in a pitched battle he defeated Adherbal, who fled to Rome, whither he had previously sent ambassadors imploring aid. Jugurtha also sent envoys with plenty of money, to be given first to his old comrades, and then to men likely to be useful. ”

“ Of the twenty brethren who were driven out by the Danes eleven years ago, only twelve yet live, and eight brethren from Abingdon supply the place of the others. God be praised that Father Adhelm yet lives! He has been my right hand in so many perils and trials.
It is so delightful to be at home once more. Surely never were monks happier. My heart swells when each morning we sing the three last joyful psalms at lauds. ”

“ Our peasantry believe however much you may try to kill quickly an adder or snake, it will never die before sunset. Mr. Robert Hunt says, "When an adder is seen, a circle is to be rapidly drawn around it and the sign of the cross made within it, whilst the first two verses of the 68th Psalm are repeated." This is to destroy it; there are also charms to be said for curing their bites, when they are apostrophised "under the ashen leaf." This charm for yellow jaundice I culled from the Western Antiquary, "I was walking in a village churchyard near the town of St. ”

“ John’s wort, if it doth not far surpasse it.” A preparation called the “green oil of charity” is still in request; and Adder’s Spear ointment (a compound of Adder’s Tongue Fern, Plantain, and sundry herbs) is well known in country places as a vulnerary. In olden times an Adder’s Tongue was reputed to be a wondrous cure for tumours, if plucked at the falling of the Moon, and applied with the accompaniment of an incantation.——Witches highly esteemed Adder’s Tongue as a plant to be employed in their spells. Astrologers class it as a herb of the Moon. ”

“ This idea is one which constantly recurs in the herbals. In 1664 Robert Turner wrote, “For what Climate soever is subject to any particular Disease, in the same Place there grows a Cure.” There is ample evidence of the survival of this theory even in the nineteenth century; for instance, in the preface to Thomas Green’s ‘Universal Herbal’ of 1816 we find the remark, “Nature has, in this country, as well as in all others, provided, in the herbs of its own growth, the remedies for the several diseases to which it is most subject.” ”

“ It would be as absurd to quarrel with the illustrations we have just described, on account of their lack of proportion, as to condemn grand opera because, in real life, men and women do not converse in song. The idea of naturalistic drawings, in which the size of the parts should be shown in their true relations, was of comparatively late growth.
In 1485, the year following the first appearance of the Latin ‘Herbarius,’ the very important work known as the German ‘Herbarius,’ or ‘Herbarius zu Teutsch,’ made its appearance at Mainz. ”

“ The best epoch in the history of the herbal, from the point of view of book-illustration, is confined within much narrower limits than the two centuries we have been considering. The suggestion has been made, and seems thoroughly justified, that the finest period should be reckoned as falling between 1530 and 1614, that is, between the wood-cuts of Hans Weiditz in Brunfels’ ‘Herbarum vivæ eicones,’ and the copper-plates of Crispian de Passe in the ‘Hortus Floridus.’ This good period thus lasted less than one hundred years, and belongs chiefly to the sixteenth century. ”

“ Turning to the herbals themselves, we find that the earliest show no trace of a natural grouping, the plants being, as a rule, arranged alphabetically. This is the case, for instance, in the Latin and German Herbarius, the Ortus Sanitatis and their derivatives, and even in the herbals of Brunfels and of Fuchs in the sixteenth century. In Bock’s herbal, on the other hand, the plants are grouped as herbs, shrubs and trees, according to the classical scheme. ”

“ Before her the monsters reverently stepped aside. “Away with you!” she cried out in a most commanding voice. “Take him up cautiously and carry him after me,” pointing to Aderke, she ordered some strange bear with birds’ legs and with a crane’s beak to carry out her commands. The monster instantly submitted to the explicit instructions and, continuing to respectfully follow her imperious commands, he went in with his burden, up the steps of the pedestal to the very idol and placed Aderke at its feet. ”

“ In manuscript form, herbals have existed from very early times, but, in the present book, those prior to the invention of printing have been scarcely touched upon. Our subject has been limited to the most active life-period of the printed herbal, which may be reckoned as beginning in the last quarter of the fifteenth century, with the ‘Book of Nature,’ the ‘Herbarium’ of Apuleius, and the Latin and German ‘Herbarius.’ When this active period ended is less easily decided, but in some senses it may fairly be taken as224 covering only the comparatively short space of two hundred years. ”

“ The Arabians I mew the herb Eyebright under the name Adhil, It now makes an ingredient in British herbal tobacco, which is smoked most usefully for chronic bronchial colds. Some sceptics do not hesitate to say that the Eyebright owes its reputation solely to the fact that the tiny flower bears in its centre a yellow spot, which is darker towards the middle, and gives a close resemblance to the human eye; wherefore, on the doctrine of signatures, it was pronounced curative of ocular derangements. ”

“ A book called ‘De virtutibus herbarum,’ erroneously attributed to Albertus Magnus, had a wide circulation from early times, being first printed in the fifteenth century. It was translated into many languages, one English version appearing about 1560 under the title ‘The boke of secretes of Albartus Magnus, of the vertues of Herbes, stones and certaine beastes.’ It does not contain very much information about plants, being mostly occupied with animals and minerals, but there are very definite references to astrology. ”

“ The herbalists seem to have attempted to keep their business select by fencing it about with all manner of superstitions, most of which have for their moral that herb-collecting is too dangerous an occupation for the uninitiated. Theophrastus draws attention to the absurdity of some of the root-diggers’ directions for gathering medicinal plants. ”

“ He explains that while waiting to complete his herbal, he has been advised to publish this little book in which he has set forth the names of plants. He adds, “and because men should not thynke that I write of that I never sawe, and that Poticaries shoulde be excuselesse when as the ryghte herbes are required of them, I have shewed in what places of Englande, Germany, and Italy the herbes growe and maye be had for laboure and money.” ”

“ For example, the back view of a human head with a thick crop of hair is introduced into the block with the Maidenhair Fern, which is an ancient specific for baldness; a Pomegranate with its seeds exposed, and a plant of “Toothwort,” with its hard, white scale-leaves, are represented in the same figure as a set of human teeth; a drawing of a scorpion accompanies some pictures of plants with articulated seed-vessels210 (Text-fig. 109) and an adder’s head is introduced below the drawing of the plant known as the “Adder’s tongue.” ”

“ I want it fearfully, for it is a leaf-climber, and therefore sacred.
I have some hopes of getting Adlumia, for I used to grow the plant, and seedlings have often come up, and we are now potting all minute reddish-coloured weeds. (667/2. We believe that the Adlumia which came up year by year in flower boxes in the Down verandah grew from seed supplied by Asa Gray.) I have just got a plant with sensitive axis, quite a new case; and tell Oliver I now do not care at all how many tendrils he makes axial, which at one time was a cruel torture to me. ”

“ The medicinal properties of plants are thus the outcome of qualities that are not obvious at sight. How, then, is the physician to be guided in selecting herbal remedies to cure the several ailments of his patients? The answer to this question given by Paracelsus is summed up in what is known as the Doctrine of Signatures. ”

“ Adair, an intent observer of Indian life, marveled at the Cherokees’ knowledge of nature’s medicines: “I do not remember to have seen or heard of an Indian dying by the bite of a snake, when out at war, or a hunting ... they, as well as all other Indian nations, have a great knowledge of specific virtues in simples: applying herbs and plants, on the most dangerous occasions, and seldom if ever, fail to effect a thorough cure, from the natural bush.... For my own part, I would prefer an old Indian before any surgeon whatsoever....” ”

“ Albertus was troubled by many subtle problems connected with the souls of plants, such questions, for instance, as whether in the case of the material union of two individuals, such as the ivy and its supporting tree, their souls also united. Like Theophrastus, and other early writers, Albertus held the theory that species were mutable, and illustrated this view by pointing out that cultivated plants might run wild and become degenerate, while wild plants might be domesticated. ”

“ He supposed, for example, that long-lived plants would lengthen a man’s life, while short-lived plants would abbreviate it. He held that herbs with a yellow sap would cure jaundice, while those whose surface was rough to the touch would heal those diseases that destroy the natural smoothness of the skin. The resemblance of certain plants to certain animals opened to Porta a vast field of dogmatism on a basis of conjecture. ”

“ The ‘Herball’ is a massive volume, in clear Roman type, contrasting markedly with the black letter used in the works of Turner and Lyte, and giving the book a much more modern appearance. It contains about 1800 woodcuts, nearly all from blocks used by Tabernæmontanus in his ‘Eicones’ of 1590, which Norton obtained from Frankfort; less than one per cent. are original. There is an illustration representing the Virginian Potato, which appears to be new, and is perhaps the first figure of this plant ever published (Text-fig. 60) . ”

“ The illustrations in Brunfels’ herbal were engraved, and probably drawn also, by Hans Weiditz, or Guiditius, some of whose work has been ascribed to Albrecht Dürer.172 The title ‘Herbarum vivæ eicones’—‘Living Pictures of Plants’—indicates the most distinctive feature of the book, namely that the artist went direct to nature, instead of regarding the plant world through the eyes of previous draughtsmen. ”

“ Lah and her subjects worshipped chiefly, and with dread, two singular powers: Hed, the serpent god whose spirit dwelt in the body of a monstrous python, called the holy Snake; and Edba, the moon goddess.
Hed gave victory in battle, revenge over enemies, success in various undertakings. Edba gave the crops and increase to the people.
70Hed was worshipped by bloody sacrifices; Edba, by offerings of fruit and flowers, save on the great yearly feast, when she, too, demanded that a human life be poured forth before her altar. ”

“ As we shall show in later chapters, nearly all the herbalists whose work is discussed in the present volume were medical men. The necessity for some means of recognising accurately the individual species of medicinal plants led in time to a sounder and more exact knowledge of their morphology than had ever been acquired under the influence of thinkers such as Albertus Magnus, who regarded with some contempt the idea of becoming acquainted in detail with the countless forms of plant life. ”

“ We were admitted by Adderley's man, whom I had not seen before, but who was some kind of foreigner, I think a Portuguese. It was characteristic of Adderley. No Englishman would ever serve him for long, and there had been more than one man in his old Company who had openly avowed his intention of dealing with Adderley on the first available occasion. ”

“ In case of a bite, the man will die; what then is the remedy? Abai says, He must take the skin of a male adder, and write upon it these words, ‘I, M., the son of the woman N., upon the skin of a male adder, I write against thee, Kanti, Kanti, Klirus.’ Some say, ‘Kandi, Kandi, Klurus, Jah, Jah, Lord of Hosts, Amen, Amen, Selah.’ Let him also cast off his clothes, and bury them in the grave-yard for twelve months of the year ”

“ Cole seems to have possessed a philosophic mind, and to have endeavoured to follow his theories to their logical conclusion. He was much exercised because a large proportion of the plants with undoubted medicinal virtues have no obvious signatures. He concluded that a certain number were endowed with signatures, in order to set man on the right track in his search for herbal remedies ”