FABLES AND PREJUDICES. 105 



celebrated among many tribes of North America ; while 

 other nations reject it, to make use of plants of the genera 

 PrencmtheSj Lactuca, HeliantJms, Spiraea, &:c., the efficacy 

 of which, as antidotes against the poison, are as little proved 

 as that of the former. jModern travellers of great name 

 have fLirnished some curious facts relating to a plant,* 

 to which the inhabitants of Colombia attribute the same 

 qualities as those ascribed to the Aristolochia in India ; 

 but it is much to be desired that these experiments were 

 repeated by persons familiar with the nature of serpents. t 

 It will be superfluous to repeat all that the ancients have 

 invented concerning the innumerable antidotes of which they 

 vaunt the efficacy. On consulting the passages of Pliny J 

 to which we refer, it will be seen that the ancients recom- 

 mend indiscriminately, for this purpose, the most hetero- 

 geneous substances ; but that the attempts which they made 

 were the result of the grossest empiricism. Deceptions of 

 this nature are practised in India and Ceylon, where they 

 sell pastilles and pills of different kinds, arbitrarily com- 

 posed of substances from the vegetable, animal, and mi- 

 neral kingdoms, and which merely act on the imagination 

 of the sufferer. § 



We have stated above, that the practice of extracting 

 from serpents the remedies against their bite, dates from 

 remote antiquity : Antonius, physician to Augustus, em- 

 ployed vipers in several diseases ;|| but it was not until the 

 time of Nero, when the physician Andromachus of Crete,^ 

 invented the theriaca, that the practice became general. 

 The theriac was an arbitrary compound of heterogeneous 

 medicaments, and was afterwards employed in maladies 

 of the most opposite nature : it was compounded in the 

 middle ages in almost all the cities of Europe, particular- 



* Plantce Equinox, ii. pi. 105. 



t [The author perhaps is not aware of the curious experiments on 

 the rattlesnake with the leaves of the Fraxinus Americana, by Judge 

 WoodruiFe, published in Silliinan's Journal for 1833. — Tr.] 



+ Hist. Natur., 28, 42, 29, 15, 17, 20, 21, 22, 25, 26, 32, 17, 19, 

 &c. 



§ Russell, i. p. 74 ; Davy, Ceylon, p. 100. 



II Plin., 30, 39. 



IT Gale.v, de Antidotis, lib. i, cap. 6. 



