Page:Chronicles of pharmacy (Volume 1).djvu/203

 with their names or with the deities and planets with which they had been so long associated. The sun ruled the heart, gold was the sun's metal, therefore gold was especially a cordial. The moon, silver, and the head were similarly associated. Iron was a tonic because Mars was strong.

"Have a care," says Culpepper, "you use not such medicines to one part of your body which are appropriated to another; for if your brain be overheated and you use such medicines as cool the heart or liver you may make mad work."

But it was not quite so simple a thing as it may seem to be to select the proper remedy, because there were conditions which made it necessary to follow an antipathetical treatment. For instance, Saturn ruling the bones caused toothache; but if Jupiter happened to be in the ascendant, the proper drug to employ was one in the service of the opposing planet. Modern astronomy has removed the heavenly bodies so far from us that we have ceased to regard them in the friendly way which once characterised our relations with them. To quote Culpepper again: "It will seem strange to none but madmen and fools that the stars should have influence upon the body of man, considering he being an epitomy of the Creation must needs have a celestial world within himself; for if there be an unity in the Godhead there must needs be an unity in all His works, and a dependency between them, and not that God made the Creation to hang together like a rope of sand."

Among the strange theories which have found acceptance in medical history, mainly it would seem by reason of their utter baselessness and absurdity, none is more