192 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES 



other, and thus gradually spread its poison in his hands and other limbs. 

 Those who attended him began to despair of his recovery. All his 

 appetite being gone, he one day took it into his head to refresh himself 

 with strawberries ; he ate them, fell asleep, desired more of that fruit to 

 be given him, and two days after rose from his bed entirely restored to 

 health and vigor. In the course of the following summer he was again 

 troubled with a relapse. He came to the palace, with a pale and dis- 

 torted countenance. The Queen Dowager asked him if he wanted any 

 thing. — " A pottle of strawberries" — answered he. The strawberries 

 were brought him; — and the next day her Majesty saw him full of 

 spirits and perfe6lly recovered in her museum of natural curiosities. 

 Three years afterwards LiNN^tus had again several fits of the gout, 

 but they were much weaker than formerly, and he always conquered 

 their virulence with strawberries. He ate them every summer; they 

 purified his blood, rendered his complexion more florid, and banished 

 the gout for ever from his frame. 



Exclusive of this new cure of the gout which casual experience had 

 taught him, his penetrating genius found the way to many other dis- 

 coveries. He first observed in. the year 1748, that the worm Tahia 

 belonged to the compound creatures, or to the animal plants ; that 

 each of its limbs had a mouth and an anus. " I have examined the 

 " Tcenia," writes he in a letter to Haller, dated September ^ 13, 

 1748*5 " and found fourteen ofthem alive and completely joined to each 



* Tan'iam examinavi et reperi quatiiordecim vivas integras ; qusesivi tapiit, quod omnes 

 medici in lumbrico late quaesiverunt, sed frustra; falsissimum est caput, quod Tulpius habet 

 in observationibus. Et frustra quaeritur caput, nam caput est in singulo articulo, et os in ' 

 jingulo articulo ; in una specie subtus, in altera ad latus. Nullus niortalium potuerit intel- 

 ligere hunc vermcm, qui non intellexerit polyporum naturam, de quibus recentiores tam 

 muha. Habet Tienia naturam polyporum et propagatur scccdcntibus articulis, dum quilibet 

 articulus vivit et accrecit in perfedum corpus. Epist. ad Haller. vol. ii. p. 411. 



X " other. 



