ii 6 
REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES 
France as a great secret *, and purchased afterwards by the late King 
for a very considerable sum; yet Linnaeus had long before discovered 
this remedy, and recommended it for use. 
The compendium of the Materia Medica , especially that part of it 
which concerns the vegetable reign, has been enriched by him with ob- 
servations and additions which he collefted during a series of up- 
wards of twenty years. Old age prevented him, however, from super- 
intending the publication of a new edition. “ I have nobody to 
“ assist me,” wrote he in the year 1771 to his friend Dr. Gieseke. 
“If you will only stay with me this -winter, I will then publish it. I 
« will read it to you, and you will write after me and arrange it in 
“ proper order i".” But this request could not be granted. 
The two last treatises on the Materia Medica he caused to be inserted 
in the collection of his academical writings. They were afterwards 
printed as a separate work at Venice-, and since that in Germany , by an 
eminent pupil of Lin n;e us, whose merits in natural history are uni- 
versally allowed. This was the aulic counsellor Sghreeer at Erlangen , 
who calls it the Golden Book (Liber Aureus). Haller, who, after 
Boerhaave, was the oracle of medicine, and a rigorous scrutinizer of 
the works of Linnaeus, publicly enumerated the intrinsic excellencies 
of that work, which he praised as one of the best of the Linnaan 
productions. In process of time more voluminous and extensive 
works were written upon the Materia Medica , but Linn /e us first lighted 
the torch which spread a new and beneficial light over the study of that 
/ 
* Radix Filicfs Maris. 
•j Neminera habeo qux me adjuvat in eo edendo. Sivis per hyemem mecum hie commorari, 
©dam et tunc tibi praelegam, ut possis transenbere et in ordinem redigere. 
science. 
