Fridrichstadt Leisure, or the Chemical Tantalus

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in his book on insects, not to mention others here. Some curious writers have also applied their minds to considering one or another insect, as the commentaries on Silkworms, Bees, Spiders, the Tarantula, and the Experiments of Francesco Redi, and what others have published on Cantharides Spanish flies, historically used in medicine., teach. Why many words? Our age has discovered about spiders and their webs—which almost exceeds human intellect—how the Most Glorious Louis XIV, King of France, used stockings made from them that were superior to those made of silk. How this invention is analogous to the sayings of Holy Scripture in the book of Job, chapter 8, verse 14; Isaiah 59, verses 5-6; and Proverbs 30, verse 29, I leave for the theologians to examine. Truly, these sayings can easily be reconciled with this more recent invention, namely that spiders' webs have no use if they are neglected, but if human industry is added, then the brilliant talents with which God has endowed this sharpness can produce something useful from them.

We pass to the Vegetable Genus, in which there are as many as there are plants and plantlets, just as many seals, boasting the character of divine omnipotence; and the signatures of the seals, which the common people neglect—concerning which, by the immortal God! the so-called orthodox physicians (those are called such who follow dogmatic-rational medicine; I, however, prefer to embrace Chemical-Empirical rational medical art, which rests on firmer foundations) are occupied, as if their shadow were the object, and as if God had in vain given them an admirable figure (though this, according to the common error of physicists, has no efficacy) and donated them with more elegant colors and an admirable taste, when nevertheless all these are to be considered as vowels in an alphabet. Furthermore, they laugh at and make light of the time of collection, when nevertheless in all natural things an increase and decrease of virtue is observed according to the constitution of time. The influence of the stars is held by them as neither here nor there; they are content with the bare nomenclature of plants, and if they apply any industry, it consists in scrutinizing only the surface of the plants which are called "official" Pharmacopoeial, or standard medicinal., the farrago of which does not even represent the thousandth part of the family. Who, however, would believe that God created so many myriads of plants in vain, devoid of every fruit and every advantage to be rendered to the human race? Hence it also happens that not rarely charlatans, old women, and other simpler people of common rank cure those diseases which the doctors—adorned with a doctoral cap and walking with a fluttering cloak, who are heard as the "lights of the world"—leave to prognostics. Indeed, it is so with every