the most incredible quackery. "The Mistery of the microcosme or little world which is man's body and the medicinal parts belonging unto man," written by Basil Valentine, Monke of the order of St. Bennet, is a storehouse of medical science. It was comprised in his will," which he hid under a Table of marble, behind the High Altar of the Cathedral Church in the Imperial City of Erfurt, leaving it there to be found by him whom God's Providence should make worthy of it." In this learned treatise the physicians of the first years of the seventeenth century learned how "the Stone of the Philosophers was made and perfectly prepared out of true Virgin's milk," and how it "transmutes the base metals into good and fixt gold." Here are described the miraculous properties of the shining, glowing, leaping, striking, trembling, falling, and superior rods-the aurum potabile and the fiery tartar. Here, too, was the manual whereby he prepared his medicines which never failed to cure. Perfect faith in all the statements of the monk of Erfurt is somewhat difficult. But it involves no such tax upon human credulity as the medical portion of the great Natural History of Pliny.

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Humanity," said Adam Smith, "is very uniform." In the first, as in the nineteenth century men who exercised calm judgment and common sense upon all other subjects, in dealing with their own healths and lives cheated themselves by the most atrocious quackery. Esculapius and Pythagoras founded the medical science for Cicero and Julius Cæsar, who in that behalf were not as well provided for as the Indians of North America are by their medicine-men in our time. For the doctors of the

Piutes and the Sioux do acquire some practical knowledge in the use of medicinal plants which is valuable. But the most inferior of these medicine-men are not credulous enough to believe that acorns pounded with salt and axle-grease constitute a certain cure for bad habits, or that the toothache is cured by biting a piece of wood from a tree which has been struck by lightning. In Pliny's time the human race must have been fearfully afflicted with disease. Just how many remedies are given in the thirty-seven books of his great work, I have not taken the trouble to count. In seven of these books, which comprise those derived from forest trees, wild and cultivated plants, living creatures, and such aquatic products as mineral waters, sea-mosses, salt, etc., there are no less than six thousand two hundred and sixty-five of these remedies described. Of these the most fruitful source is salt, and the bramble and creeping ivy respectively furnish fifty-one and thirty-nine. The witch-hazel was probably unknown to Pliny. If he comprises it under the general word hazel, it by no means possesses the magical qualities attributed to "Pond's Extract." On the contrary, it produces headache and increase of flesh and is really good only for catarrh.

If Pliny is an authority, the surgery of his time was as extraordinary as its pharmacopoeia. An expeditious union of broken bones was accomplished by bruising the ashes of burnt field-mice with honey, and burnt earth-worms were extremely useful for the extraction of splintered bones. To extract arrows, pointed weapons, and other hard substances from the body, the Roman surgeon applied the body of a mouse split asunder, or in special cases the head of

ence.

the same animal pounded with salt, and the same practitioner cured his drunkard with the eggs of an owlet in three days. We cannot pursue the historical accounts of this great authority in natural sciHe was a close observer of the scientific progress of his time. But for Pliny, the works of Diocles of Carystus, of Hippocrates, Praxagoras, Herophilus, and Erasistratus would have been lost to science and the remedies of Cleophantus and Asclepiades would never have been preserved.

In the records of the earliest explorations of the New World are found illustrations of the medical uses of plants by the native Indians of great interest. Jacques Cartier of Saint Malo, that enterprising French explorer, first ascended the St. Lawrence River in May, 1535. Arrested by the rapids above Montreal, he found the rich alluvial soil along the river carpeted with wild flowers. His men sincerely believed that they had reached the Flowery Kingdom. They exclaimed, "La Chine! La Chine!" and gave a name to the locality which it bears to-day. They landed, and, ignorant of the changes of temperature to which the region was subject, determined to remain there while expeditions were sent out to explore the surrounding country. Suddenly the cold of December gathered them in its embrace. They had none but salted provisions, and they were quickly attacked by the scurvy. Said the historian of the expedition: "We were stricken by a disease previously unknown-the legs were swollen, the muscles turned black as charcoal and seemed spotted with drops of blood. The disease involved the hips, thighs, shoulders, arms, and neck. The gums became rotten, the teeth loosened so that they fell from the

jaws. Of one hundred and ten men from our three ships, by the middle of February there were not ten who were strong enough to take care of the sick, and there were not fifty who had any hope of life." In this desperate condition the Frenchmen were visited by two Indian women who made a decoction from the bark of a tree and made the sick men drink it. The effect was almost miraculous. As soon as they drank it the disease was arrested, and within two weeks every sick man was cured. The species of the tree is given only by its Indian name, but it was probably the black cherry or a species of the willow. "Tous ceulx qui en ont voullu vser ont recouvert santé et guerison, la grace a dieu," is the conclusion of Cartier's record of the incident.

CHAPTER XXII.

ESSEX JUNCTION.

THERE is no term in American lexicography the mention of which raises the indignation of so many travellers to a white heat as "Essex Junction." The reasons for this will hereafter abundantly appear. As I had some connection with its monstrous birth and a thorough knowledge of its earlier growth, perhaps a sketch of its history may be, in some sense, a duty.

Away back in the early forties two lines of railroad from Boston were constructed pari passu toward Burlington, a common terminus. We may call them the Rutland and the Central. No one then supposed that they would extend farther west, for Lake Champlain was thought to interpose an impassable barrier. Later, and before either road was constructed to its terminus, the Vermont and Canada was chartered from Burlington north to Canada line, and this road was leased to and became permanently identified with the Central. Still later an application was made to the legislature in the name of the Vermont and Canada to bridge Lake Champlain at Rouse's Point so as to secure an unbroken line toward the West.

Then commenced a contest famous in the legislative annals of Vermont. The Rutland, supported by the towns south and west of its line, supposed it could stay the progress of the railroad westward. Burling