REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES 
240 
Though the enthusiastic violence with which Linnaeus exerted him- 
self, and the excessive study of nature, which made him forget all 
other concerns, would often times prove detrimental to his health, — 
yet the charms of nature as frequently helped to restore it to its pris- 
tine vigor. When he completed his Philosophies Botanica , in the sum- 
mer of 1751, and in the following year, he had a most violent fit of 
the gout, and was obliged to keep to his bed almost totally deprived of 
the use of his limbs. It was at this period, that his pupil Kalm re- 
turned from North- America with a great number of new plants and 
other natural curiosities. The desire of seeing these treasures, and the 
delight which he felt when he actually saw them, was so great, as to 
make the gout fortunately disappear*. The composition of the Species 
Plantarum , the most excellent and most laborious of his works, occa- 
sioned also an illness, which served to accelerate his death. The 
constant silence which attended his studies, brought on the stone and 
the most excruciating pains in his right side. When his pupil Ro- 
lan der, returned from Surinam, he felt the liveliest sensations of 
joy. Rolan der had brought with him the Cochineal-tree (Cottus 
Cochenillifer), on which were to be seen alive the inserts from which 
the red colour used in dying scarlet is extratted. This joy was how- 
ever soon changed into the deepest sadness, owing to a mistaken care- 
« The celebrated Peter Wargentin, Secretary of the Royal Academy at Stockholm, 
who died in 1783, wrote on this subjeft to Baron Haller, August u, 1751.— 
« Sane las naum, jam hypochondrico malo et doloribus podagrios agomzantem re- 
« suscitavit Kalmius, ostendendo solummodo insignem numerum plantarum ranssimarum, 
•< et quae nondum ab alio Botanico fuerunt descriptae. Tantus amor florum !” 
I.innaus himself related afterwards this occurrence to a friend in the following words: 
“ Kalmius liic appulerat, altcroque die monstrabat thesauros collect os. Ego r 
spexi, quum in lcfto me verterc non possem, sed tamen mirum in modum us, qua vidi, 
u deleftabar, idque ad reparandam sanitatem multum contulit.” 
fulness. 
