To what serious reflections does not this curious history give rise. Herethere did unquestionably exist a double existence. The one a relativebeing surrounded with the realities of life; the other a naturalcondition, unshackled by constraint, and left entirely to the wildenjoyment of a luxuriant fancy and an apprehension quick and brilliant. Inthe former, the young creature found herself derided and degraded by hervulgar companions; her generous infirmities, if such they may be called,made the subject of low ribaldy. In her second existence, she became thefree child of nature.
At such times as the merchants do make their ordinary or voluntaryfeasts, it is a world to see what great provision is made of all manner ofdelicate meats from every quarter of the country, wherein, beside thatthey are often comparable herein to the nobility of the land, they willseldom regard any thing that the butcher usually killeth, but reject thesame as not worthy to come in place. In such cases, also, geliffes ofall colours, mixed with a variety in the representation of sundry flowers,herbs, trees, forms of beasts, fish, fowls, and fruits; and thereuntomarchpane wrought with no small curiosity, tarts of divers hues andsundry denominations; conserves of old fruits, foreign and home-bred;suckets, codiniacs, marmalades, sugar-bread, ginger-bread, florentines,wild-fowl, venison of all sorts, and sundry outlandish confections,altogether seasoned with sugar, (which Pliny calls mel ex arundinibus, adevice not common nor greatly used in old times at the table, but only inmedicine, although it grew in Arabia, India, and Sicilia,) do generallybear the sway, besides infinite devices of our own not possible for me toremember. Of the potato, and such venerous roots as are brought out ofSpain, Portingale, and the Indies, to furnish our banquets, I speak not,wherein our Mures, of no less force, and to be had about CrosbyRavenswath, do now begin to have place.
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The Indians of Guiana dip their arrows in the juice of the Woorara, andthe Curara, which also occasions rapid death and decomposition of thelungs. Humboldt informs us that the Curara is obtained from the bark ofa tree called Vejuco de Mavacure; it is inspissated over a slow fireand then mixed with a gum drawn from the Kiracagnero. The Abbé SalvadorGilii tells us in his history of America, that he has seen the strongestanimals succumb instantly when thus wounded, but the poison does notproduce any effect on their meat.
[Pg 255]This simple mode of dressing wounds, especially those that were inflictedby fire-arms, was a great desideratum; for, up to this era in surgery,these injuries were healed by the application of scalding oil or red-hotinstruments, under the impression that they were of a poisonous nature.Paré was one of the first army-surgeons who exploded this barbarouspractice. Having, according to his own account, expended all his boilingoil, he employed a mixture of yolk of egg, oil, and turpentine, notwithout the apprehension of finding his patients labouring under all theeffects of poison the following day; when, to his great surprise, he foundthem much more relieved than those to whom the actual cautery had beenapplied. In more recent times, armies have been unjustly accused of makinguse of poisonous balls; and this absurd charge was brought against theFrench after the battle of Fontenoy, when the hospital fever broke outamong the wounded crowded in the neighbouring villages. Chewing bulletswas also considered a means of imparting to them a venomous quality. Leadand iron, the metals of which these projectiles were usually cast, werealso deemed of a poisonous nature. A sort of aristocratic feeling seemedto obtain in those days; and it is related that two Spanish gentlemen hadprocured gold balls to fire at Francis I. at the battle of Pavia, that sonoble and generous a prince should not fall by the vile metal reserved forvulgar people; and, in the adverse ranks, La Chatarguene, a noble of theFrench court, had prepared bullets of the same costly material for thereception of Charles V. It was under the impression of this poisonousnature of wounds, that individuals of both sexes, called suckers, followedarmies, and endeavoured to extract the venom by suction; the records ofchivalry give us instances of lovely damsels who condescended to performthis operation with their lovely mouths upon their damoiseaux; andSibille submitted the wounds of her husband, Duke Robert, to a similartreatment: indeed, these suckers were chiefly females. May not thispractice be the origin of the term leech, applied in ancient times tomedical men? Leechcraft was the art of healing. Thus Spenser:
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