BOOK XXVIIL 
REMEDIES DERIVED FROM LIVING CREATURES. 
CHAP. 1. (1.) INTEODUCTIOIT. 
We should have now concluded our description of the various 
things^ that are produced between the heavens and the earth, 
and it would have only remained for us to speak of the sub- 
stances that are dug out of the ground itself ; did not our expo- 
sition of the remedies derived from plants and shrubs neces- 
sarily lead us into a digression upon the medicinal properties 
which have been discovered, to a still greater extent, in those 
living creatures themselves which are thus indebted [to other 
objects] for the cure of their respective maladies. Eor ought we, 
after describing the plants, the forms of the various flowers, and 
so many objects rare and difficult to be found — ^ought we to pass 
in silence the resources which exist in man himself for the 
benefit of man, and the other remedies to be derived from the 
creatures that live among us — and this more particularly, 
seeing that life itself is nothing short of a punishment, unless 
it is exempt from pains and maladies ? Assuredly not ; and 
even though I may incur the risk of being tedious, I shall 
exert all my energies on the subject, it being my fixed deter- 
mination to pay less regard to what may be amusing, than to 
what may prove practically useful to mankind. 
]^ay, even more than this, my researches will extend to the 
usages of foreign countries, and to the customs of barbarous 
nations, subjects upon which I shall have to appeal to the 
good faith of other authors ; though at the same time I have 
made it my object to select no^ facts but such as are established 
1 The trees and plants. 
2 On the contrary, this and the four following Books are full of the most 
extravagant assertions, which bear ample testimony to his credulity, not- 
withstanding the author s repeated declarations that he does not believe in 
Magic. As Ajasson sa3^s, he evidently does not know what he ought to 
have inserted in his work, and what to reject as utterly unworthy of belief. 
His faults, however, were not so much his own as those of his age. Want 
of space, equally with want of inclination, compels us to forego the task of 
entering into an examination of the system of Animal Therapeutics upoa 
which so much labour has been wasted by our author. 
T 2 
