Note 7 — Chapter II
Reading edition
The whimsical "doctrine of signatures" which prevailed in the middle ages, and had its origin from very remote times, serves at least to show that the local tendencies of medicines have always been more or less recognised. So slight an experience is sufficient to demonstrate their existence, that it could indeed hardly be otherwise. It was oddly supposed that every natural substance bore evidence in its outward form or physical peculiarities of the part of the system over which it exerted a curative power.