"
Spenser speaks of it in the same strain:--
"Yet euphrasie may not be left unsung,
That gives dim eyes to wander leagues around."
And Thomson says:--
"If she, whom I implore, Urania, deign
With euphrasy to purge away the mists,
Which, humid, dim the mirror of the mind."
With reference to its use in modern times, Anne Pratt[3] tells us how,
"on going into a small shop in Dover, she saw a quantity of the plant
suspended from the ceiling, and was informed that it was gathered and
dried as being good for weak eyes;" and in many of our rural districts I
learn that the same value is still attached to it by the peasantry.
Again, it is interesting to observe how, under a variety of forms, this
piece of superstition has prevailed in different parts of the world. By
virtue of a similar association of ideas, for instance, the gin-seng [4]
was said by the Chinese and North American Indians to possess certain
virtues which were deduced from the shape of the root, supposed to
resemble the human body [5]--a plant with which may be compared our
mandrake. The Romans of old had their rock-breaking plant called
"saxifraga" or _sassafras_; [6] and we know in later times how the
granulated roots of our white meadow saxifrage (_Saxifraga granulata_),
resembling small stones, were supposed to indicate its efficacy in the
cure of calculous complaints.
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