275 



BOOK XXVIII. 



REMEDIES DERIVED FROM LIVING CREATURES. 



CHAP. 1. (1.) INTKODtJCTION. 



"We should have now concluded our description of the various 

 things^ that are produced between the heavens and the earth, 

 and it would have only remained for us to speak of the sub- 

 stances that are dug out of the ground itself ; did not our expo- 

 sition of the remedies derived from plants and shrubs neces- 

 sarily lead us into a digression upon the medicinal properties 

 which have been discovered, to a still greater extent, in those 

 living creatures themselves which are thus indebted [to other 

 objects] for the cure of their respective maladies. For ought we, 

 after describing the plants, the forms of the various flowers, and 

 so many objects rare and difficult to be found — ought we to pass 

 in silence the resources which exist in man himself for the 

 benefit of man, and the other remedies to be derived from the 

 creatures that live among us — and this more particularly, 

 seeing that life itself is nothing short of a punishment, unless 

 it is exempt from pains and maladies ? Assuredly not ; and 

 even though I may incur the risk of being tedious, I shall 

 exert all my energies on the subject, it being my fixed deter- 

 mination to pay less regard to what may be amusing, than to 

 what may prove practically useful to mankind. 



x^ay, even more than this, my researches will extend to the 

 usages of foreign countries, and to the customs of barbarous 

 nations, subjects upon which I shall have to appeal to the 

 good faith of other authors ; though at the same time I have 

 made it my object to select no^ facts but such as are established 



^ The trees and plants. 



2 On the contrary, this and the four following Books are full of the most 

 extravagant assertions, which bear ample testimony to his credulity, not- 

 withstanding the author's repeated declarations that he does not believe m 

 Magic. As Ajasson says, he evidently does not know what he ought to 

 have inserted in his work, and what to reject as utterly unworthy of belief. 

 His faults, however, were not so much his own as those of his age. Want 

 of space, equally with want of inclination, compels us to forego the task of 

 entering into an examination of the system of Animal Therapeutics upon 

 which so much labour has been waotecl bv our autlior. 



T 2 



