CHAP. 7.—REMEDIES DERIVED FROM OTHER CHAPLET PLANTS.
No plant
1 in particular was employed in the composition of
this crown, such only being used as were found growing on
the spot so imperilled; and thus did they become the means,
however humble and unnoted themselves, of conferring high
honour and renown. All this, however, is but little known
among us at the present day; a fact which I am the less surprised at, when I reflect that those plants even are treated
with the same indifference, the purpose of which it is to preserve our health, to allay our bodily pains, and to repel the
advances of death! And who is there that would not visit
with censure, and justly visit, the manners of the present day?
Luxury and effeminacy have augmented the price at which
we live, and never was life more hankered after, or worse
cared
2 for, than it is at present. This, however, we look upon
as the business of others, forsooth; other persons must see to it,
without our troubling ourselves to request them, and the physicians must exercise the necessary providence in our behalves.
3
As for ourselves, we go on enjoying our pleasures, and are con-
tent to live—a thing that in my opinion reflects the highest
possible disgrace—by putting faith in others.
4
Nay, even more than this, we ourselves are held in derision
by many, for undertaking these researches, and are charged
with busying ourselves with mere frivolities! It is some
solace, however, in the prosecution of these our boundless
labours, to have Nature as our sharer in this contempt: Nature who, as we will prove beyond a doubt, has never failed
in coming to the assistance of man, and has implanted
5 reme-
dies for our use in the most despised even of the vegetable productions, medicaments in plants which repel us with their
thorns.
It is of these, in fact, that it remains for us now to speak, as
next in succession to those which we have mentioned in the
preceding Book; and here we cannot sufficiently admire, and,
indeed, adore,
6 the wondrous providence displayed by Nature.
She had given us, as already
7 shewn, plants soft to the touch,
and agreeable to the palate; in the flowers she had painted
the remedies for our diseases with her varied tints, and, while
commingling the useful with the delicious, had attracted our
attention by means of the pleasures of the eye. Here, how-
ever, she has devised another class of plants, bristling and repulsive to the sight, and dangerous to the touch; so much so,
indeed, that we fancy we all but hear the voice of her who
made them as she reveals to us her motives for so doing. It is
her wish, she says, that no ravening cattle may browse upon
them, that no wanton hand may tear them up, that no heedless footstep may tread them down, that no bird, perching there,
may break them: and in thus fortifying them with thorns, and
arming them with weapons, it has been her grand object
to save and protect the remedies which they afford to man.
Thus we see, the very qualities even which we hold in such
aversion, have been devised by Nature for the benefit and advantage of mankind.