On Poisonous Plants

Kidney beans, Hyacinth beans, Bitter vetch, Vetch, and Vetchling; garden plants such as Nettle, Spinach, Chard, Goosefoot, Purslane, Breadfruit, and cultivated Cabbage; fleshy roots like Carrots, Parsnips, and Turnips; and bulbous plants such as Ixia, Gladiolus, and Yam; various fleshy fruits like the Fig, Date, Carob, Custard-apple, Rose-apple, Banana, and dried Figs; many nuts such as Almonds, Walnuts, Hazelnuts, Beech-nuts, Coconuts, and six hundred original: "sexcenta"; a common Latin idiom for an indefinitely large number others.

§. 4.

Medicines, which belong to the medical marketplace, are each and every one of those aids to which every age and every era has had its refuge in overcoming diseases and in restoring health. Under this class, all remedies serve and ought to serve, both those milder by their nature and the stronger ones, which are properly called poisons, and which—when applied prudently either in a reduced dose or diluted and mitigated—have often cured rebellious diseases. These remedies, according to their diverse quality and according to the diverse constitution of the living body, act in quite varied ways. To a more robust man, enjoying firmer health, a larger dose must generally be administered, while a woman of a more delicate frame original: "laxioris compagis"; literally 'of a looser structure' can scarcely endure the smallest portion of the same remedy. This is the reason why a robust countryman takes a whole drachm of JalapA powerful purgative root from Mexico, common in early modern medicine without any harm, while a hysterical woman can scarcely smell the odor of milder RhubarbUsed historically as a laxative and for stomach ailments without vomiting and a loosening of the bowels. Thus, that very same remedy can be judged a poison to the latter, which to the former is a health-giving and harmless drug. Even to an infant, that can be a poison which is a remedy to an adult, unless the quantity to be prescribed for each age is observed as it ought to be. MuskA strong-smelling secretion from the musk deer, used both in perfume and as a stimulant spreads an odor pleasing to the male sex, but to the weaker sex, especially those prone to hysteria, it is very unpleasant and even intolerable to the point of fainting. Certain remedies for some...