Herbal Simples and Extracts for Medicinal Use

W.T. Fernie a notable British herbalist of the past century can be credited with a complete and referable compendium on herbal extracts. He is referred by one and all who wishes to venture into the world of time tested and effective herbal simples. His work has been adapted because of its most focused and complete, though biased to British Topography. The book takes into account British native Herbal Simples and seeks rather to justify their uses on the sound basis of accurate chemical analysis and precise elementary research. Hitherto medicinal herbs have come down to us from early times as possessing only a traditional value, and as exercising merely empirical effects. Their selection has been commended solely by a shrewd discernment, and by the practice of successive centuries. By to-day a closer analysis in the laboratory, and skilled provings by experts have resolved the several plants into their component parts, and have chemically determined the medicinal nature of these parts, both singly and collectively. So that the study and practice of curative British herbs may now fairly take rank as an exact science, and may command the full confidence of the sick for supplying trustworthy aid and succour in their times of bodily need. The chief purpose of this book is to reconsider safe and sound herbal curative remedies and medicines which were formerly in vogue as homely simples, whether to be taken or to be outwardly applied. And the main object has been to show with what confidence their uses may be now resumed, or retained under the guidance of modern chemical teachings, and of precise scientific provings. This question equally applies, whether the Simples be employed as auxiliaries by the physician in attendance, or are welcomed for prompt service in a household emergency as ready at hand when the doctor cannot be immediately had.