BOOK XXVII. II. 5-9 



Although by themselves both are deadly, yet the two 

 poisons in a human being perish together so that the 

 human survives. Moreover even remedies used by wild 

 beasts have been handed down by the ancients, who 

 have shown how venomous « creatures also by them- 

 selves obtain heaHng. Scorpions, touched by aconite, 

 become numbed, and are pale and stupefied, acknow- 

 ledging their defeat. They find a help in white 

 hellebore, its touch dispelhng the torpor ; the aconite 

 yields to two evil foes, one pecuhar to itself and one 

 common to all creatures. If anyone beheves that 

 these discoveries could, by any chance, have been 

 made by a man, he shows himself ungrateful 

 for the gods' gifts. They touch ^ flesh with aconite, 

 and kill panthers by a mere taste of it, otherwise 

 panthers would overrun the regions where they are 

 found. For this reason some have called aconite 

 pardahanches, that is panther-strangler. But it has 

 been proved that panthers are at once saved from 

 this death by tasting human excrement ; surely 

 nobody doubts that this remedy has been found by 

 Chance, and that on every occasion it is even today a 

 new find, since wild animals have neither reason nor 

 experience for results to be passed from one to 

 another. This Chance therefore, this is that great 

 deity who has made most of the discoveries that 

 enrich our Hfe, this is the name of him by whom is 

 meant she who is at once the Mother and the 

 Mistress of all creation. Either guess is equally 

 Hkely, whether we judge that wild animals make 

 these discoveries every day or that they possess a 

 never-faiHng instinct. Again it is shameful that all 

 animals except man know what is health-giving for 

 themselves. Our ancestors however advertised the 



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