Tres Orationes

no, the weasel by grazing on rue when it devours a serpent, or is engaged in a struggle with them in the hunting of mice. Boars cure themselves in illness by eating ivy. A bear, after long hibernation, having emerged from its den into the sunlight, rids its hitherto constricted bowels of the sharpness of wild arum. Dogs also, when χολεριῶντες suffering from cholera/bilious illness, have discovered Canary grass, by which they remove the disgust from the infesting bile and restrain their nausea. Nature has implanted such a care for their own preservation in living creatures that they could be safe even without the provision of humans. It is not surprising that such spectacles given by them moved the ancients so much that they called into question whether νόησις intellect/the power of reasoning could justly be abrogated from the brute kind, since, besides other countless things which are indeed wonderful, they claimed for themselves a great and excellent portion of each of the three kinds of medicine. But days and paper would fail me if I were to intend to follow up one by one in my discourse what brutes have that is θαυμασιώτατα most wonderful in this kind, and what they exercise for the sake of their own health, without a teacher, with no reason, no counsel, but by the impulse and instinct of nature; nor does it greatly pertain to our present undertaking. One would easily find it difficult to speak or to be silent about the wonderful works and effects of plants in the bodies of living creatures, since the wealth of nature is so great, and its display so magnificent and glorious, that both the selection from such a heap