If you want to know how pleurisy root, lungwort and abscess root got their names, how poison ivy is used to treat rheumatishm, or how garlic guarded against the Bubonic Plague, consult "A Modern Herbal." This twentieth-century version of the medieval Herbal is as rich in scientific fact and folklore as its predecessors and is equally encyclopedic in coverage. From aconite to zedoary, not an herb, grass, fungus, shrub or tree is overlooked; and strange and wonderful discoveries about even the most common of plants await the reader.