30 APPENDIX. 



with a poifon that mult needs diminifh them. And we may; 

 therefore without fcruple fuppofe that Galen was miftaken 

 in the quality afcribed to this drug, and that he might have 

 imagined, from tendernefs to the profeflion, that people, 

 died of the opocalpafum who perhaps really died of the 

 phyfician : Firil, Becaufe we know of no gum or refin that . 

 is a mortal poifon: Secondly, Becaufe, from the conftruction 

 of its parrs, gum could not have the activity which violent 

 poifon has; and confidering the fmall quantities in which 

 myrrh is taken, and the opocalpafum could have been but 

 in an inconfiderable proportion to the myrrh, to have kill- - 

 ed, it nruft have been a very active poifon indeed : Thirdly, 

 thefe accidents from a known caufe mud have brought 

 myrrh into difufe, as certainly as the Spaniards mixing arfe- 

 nic with bark would banifh that drug when we faw people 

 die of it. Now this never was the cafe, it maintained its 

 character among the Greeks and the Arabs, and fo down to 

 our days ; and. a modern phyfician, Van Helmont, thinks 

 it might make man immortal if it could be rendered per- 

 fectly foluble in the human body. Galen then was mifta- 

 ken as to the poifonous quality of the opocalpafum. The 

 Greek phyfician knew little of the Natural Hiftory of Ara- 

 bia, lefs Hill of that of Abyflinia, and we who have followed 

 them know nothing of either. 



This gum being put into water, fwells and turns white, 

 and lofes all its glue ; it very much refembles gum adra- 

 gant in quality, and may be eaten fafely. This fpecimen 

 came from the Troglodyte country in the year 1771. The 

 Sana, the tree which produces the opocalpafum, does not 

 jgx) win. Arabia,,., Arabian myrrh is eafily known from Abyf- 



finian 



