Fridrichstadt Leisure, or the Chemical Tantalus

(o)

plant that, if a thousand doctors were gathered in one place to pass judgment on the virtue of a plant, whether even more virtues were in it, a person of lower rank could enumerate more than so many adorned in doctoral purple. Every plant, even if it be hyssop creeping from a wall, is of infinite virtue. God, the Creator of infinite power, also endowed every Creature with a treasury of infinite virtues. We experience at this time that even fungi, which are the excrements of the earth, and cannot even be referred to as plants—a certain great Italian, if I am not mistaken, born of a most generous lineage, was primarily occupied with scrutinizing the history and nature of fungi, and he performed much in scrutinizing their nature, of whose labor and scrutiny the Leipzig Acts and the News of Learned Men have made mention not without great praise and encomium. (For the review of which, may God further excite such talents, and may there never be a lack of learned men who devote their work to this labor, and not without great detriment to the Republic, so that the New Literaria of the Baltic Sea and our Germany may end.) Fungi have been considered until now as nothing, like useless, excreted filth of the earth; but that great Italian Knight showed that these fungi possess their own utility and admirable nature, and indeed it can be said of them: this also is a character of divine omnipotence, of which the signature also expresses something singular, and the Archeus The internal, formative power in living things. of Nature shows a wondrous play in them.

The industry of certain great physicians is highly to be praised, who have applied great study in adorning herbals and have shown that this Kingdom also contains such things that are altogether admirable even to the sight. It would contribute much to the digging out of the Arcana of such a Kingdom if more would follow in the footsteps of Tilingius, Paulinus, Francius, and others, and choose some singular plant to examine or to dissect; then in the course of time a more perfect botanical science would be cultivated. I propose a single problem to the whole Theater of Physicians. It is known, of course, that God, just as He created all things in weight, number, and measure, so also constituted certain degrees in all families of creatures, so that it may be allowed to know from the two families of sublunary bodies which is the most excellent body of all in that family; and thus it is known in the family of Minerals that Gold is the most excellent; in the family of Animals, man, as God’s Viceroy, is the most excellent. Let the physicians now say, however many there are, what is the most excellent body in the Kingdom of Vegetables? Perhaps they will use here