OF CURIOSITY. 191 



was able to form a right judgment of the caf- 

 airilldy who did not know its natural order. 

 No phyfician would have even fufpecled, that 

 our milkwort would be ufefuU in the bite of 

 ferpents, and inflammatory fevers, unlefs the 

 principles of botany had led him to it. No 

 one has even thought of trying the mitreolci 

 Americana againft the bite of ferpents, which 

 yet without ever feeing it, we may certainly con- 

 elude to be efficacious in thofe cafes from the 

 ophicrrhiza Afiatica or true lignum coluhrinum *". 

 When botanifls knew the above-mentioned 

 turnera^ but were ignorant to what natural 

 clafs it ought to be referred, no man could 



guefs 



^ This root is known in the Eaft-Indies to be a fpecific 

 againft the poifon of that moil dreadrui animal called the 

 hooded-ferpent. There is a treatife in Amasn. Acad. vol. 2. 

 upon this fubjeft, wherein the author Joh. And. Darelius 

 undertakes, from the defcription of fuch authors as had feen 

 it upon the fpot, to afcertain the plant from which the ge- 

 nuine root is taken. It appears in this account that it had 

 puzzled the European phyficians, and what had been fold in 

 tlie fhops for it is the root of a very different plant and of a 

 poifonous nature. 



The true root is caJled mungos for the following reafon. 

 There is a kind of nveefel ia the Raft-Indies called rnungutia 

 by the natives, ffiungo by Portaguefe, and vnaicas by the 

 Dutch. Thi^s animal purfues the hcoded-j}rps?itf as the cat 



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