OF THE LIFE OF LINN^US. 215 



botany remained an irregular and tottering edifice, the Materia Medica 

 mostly languished in the same condition. Thus a weak mother gave 

 birth to a frail and puny daughter. 



LiNN^us became the modern creator of botany and natural history, 

 and at the same time of the Materia Medica. When he examined plants 

 or other natural produftions, their intrinsic properties and ceconoraical 

 or medical virtues were generally the obj efts of his attention. And the 

 fruit of his observations (the finest which his knowledge of nature could 

 produce) became a general description of the great apparatus of 

 remedies which are embosomed for the benefit of man's health in the 

 three reigns of nature. 



As the richest of those reigns, he first described the vegetable pro- 

 duQions, especially those which grow in his own country; and in a like 

 manner, sometime after, those sanative substances which exist in the ani- 

 mal and mineral reigns *. That spirit of precision and order which cha- 

 rafterises all his works, is also highly conspicuous in those descriptions. 

 The confused appellations which had till then prevailed with regard to 

 many plants were now destroyed ; he assigned to every plant its real rank, 

 its pharmatical and botanical names, the synonomy or bye-names given 

 by the ancients, its native soil and properties, and an exa6l description of 

 its sanative virtues. Many medicaments which have since been cried 

 up as new discoveries, had long ago been known to Linn aus ; for in- 

 stance, a certain remedy against the Tcenia was puffed and spoken of in 



* Materia Medica e Regno Vegetabin. Helm. 1749 E Regno Animali. Upsal, 1752. 



—E Regno Lapideo. Upsal, 1752. Respefting the first part of this work, John Gesner 

 wrote to Haller in the year i749> " Linn^I Materiam Medicam accepi, magno judicio, 

 ** non sine eximio usu digestum opusculum," 



France 



