Tres Orationes

since everyone experiences this in himself, and even brute animals know it, having been taught by experience the faculties of many plants, the use of which they later showed to us, being in no way unskilled teachers of men in this part of medicine just as they are in others. They do not only care for themselves through the moderation of food, but they seek out remedies from herbs for their own health and safety, for the sake of which nature gave beasts, besides appetite, also a sense by which they could distinguish the salutary from the pestiferous, just as with that other sense they have an effort toward taking their natural pastures. It is heard that panthers, which are caught in Barbary by poisoned meat, have a certain remedy of herbs which, when they have used it, prevents them from dying. The snake strips off its body membrane, covered with the filth of winter, with the juice of fennel, and emerges shining and vigorous. When its sight is obscured, it restores its keenness while hibernating in its den by rubbing against the same herb, which thins and scrapes away the film that has grown over its dim eyes. Indeed, from this it has been understood that the dimness of human eyes is also especially relieved by this. A deer, pierced by a poisoned arrow, ejects it by tasting dittany, which Cicero in the second book On the Nature of the Gods ascribes to wild goats in Crete. A doe, before giving birth, is purged by the herb seseli, thus using a lighter womb: if she eats of the same after giving birth, she returns to her offspring. The tortoise, by grazing on cunila (which they call 'ox-herb'), restores its strength against serpents; the stork, by grazing on origa-