OF CURIOSITY. 
191 
was able to form a right judgment of the caf* 
carilla , who did not know , its natural order. 
No phyflcian would have even fufpected, that 
our milkwort would be ufefull in the bite of 
fefpents, and inflammatory fevers, unlefs the 
principles of botany had led him to it. No 
one has even thought of trying the mitreolct 
Americana againft the bite of ferpents, which 
yet without ever feeing it, we may certainly con- 
clude to be efficacious in thofe cafes from the 
ophiorrhiza Afiatica or true lignum colubrinum b . 
When botanifts knew the above-mentioned 
turnera , but were ignorant to what natural 
clafs it ought to be referred, no man could 
guefs 
b This root is known in the Eaft-Indies to be a fpecific 
againft the poifon of that moft dreadful animal called the 
booded-ferpent. There is a treatife in Amsen. Acad. vol. 2. 
upon this fubjeft, wherein the author Joh. And. Darelius 
undertakes, from the defcription of fuch authors as had feen 
it upon the fpot, to afcertain the plant from which the ge- 
nuine root is taken. It appears in this account that it had 
puzzled the European phyftcians, and what had been fold in 
the Ihops for it is the root of a very different plant and of a 
poifonous nature. 
The true root is called mu?igos for the following reafbn. 
There is a kind of nveefel in the Eaft-Indies called mungutia 
by the natives, mungo by Portuguefe, and muncas by the 
Dutch, This animal purfues the hooded-ferpent , as the cat 
does 
