166 Biographical Account of [Sepr. 
while Dombey found it in a wild state on all the Cordillieras, where 
the Indians still apply it to the same purposes as at the time of the 
original discovery. 
The mistake may have been owing to this circumstance, that 
Virginia produces several other tuberose plants, which from imper- 
fect descriptions may have been confounded with the potatoe. 
Bauhin, for example, took for the potatoe the plant called openawk 
by Thomas Harriot. There are likewise in Virginia ordinary pofa- 
toes ; but the anonymous author of the history of that country says, 
that they have nothing in common with the potatoe of Ireland and 
England, which is our pomme de terre. 
Be this as it may, that admirable vegetable was received in a 
very different maniaer by the nations of Europe, The Irish seem to 
have taken advantage of them first; for at an early period we find 
the plant distinguished by the name of Jrish potatoe. But in France 
they were at first proscribed. Bauhin states that in his time the use 
of them had been prohibited in Burgundy, because it was supposed 
that they produced the leprosy. 
It is difficult to believe that a plant so innocent, so agreeable, so 
productive, which requires so little trouble to be rendered fit for 
food ; that a root so well defended against the intemperance of the 
seasons; that a plant which by a singular privilege unites in itself 
every advantage, without any other inconvenience than that of not 
lasting all the year, but which even owes to this circumstance the 
additional advantage that it cannot be hoarded up by monopolists— 
that such a plant should have required two centuries in order to 
overcome the most puerile prejudices, 
Yet we ourselves have been witnesses of the fact. The English 
brought the potatoe into Flanders during the wars of Louis XIV. 
It was thence spread, but very sparingly, over some parts of France. 
Switzerland had put a higher value on it, and had found it very 
good. Several of our southern provinces had planted it in imita- 
tion of that country at the period of the scarcities, which were 
several times repeated during the last years of Louis XV. Turgot 
in particular rendered it common in the Limousin and the Angou- 
mois, over which he was Intendant; and it was to be expected that 
in ashort time this new branch of subsistence would be spread over 
the kingdom, when some old physicians renewed against it the pre- 
judices of the sixteenth century. 
It was no longer accused of producing leprosy, but fevers. The 
scarcities had produced in. the south certain epidemics, which they 
thought proper to ascribe to the sole means which existed to prevent 
them. ‘Che Comptroller General was obliged in 1771 to request 
the opinion of the faculty of medicine, in order to put an end to 
these false notions. 
Parmentier, who had learned to appreciate the potatoe in the 
prisons of Germany, where he had been often confined to that 
food, seconded the views of the Minister by a chemical examination 
