'Observations Surrounding Vipers' by Franceso Redi, continued:

    After which it will not be entirely outside the theme to investigate if the bodies of vipers, or the places where they lie hidden, or the boxes in which they are kept, truly exhale a rank and unpleasant odour, as Aldrovando would have it, along with many others in recent times, and in older times, Martial:

Quod vulpis fuga, viperae cubile,
Mallem, quam quod oles, olere, Bassa.⁽¹⁴¹⁾

    My response to this is that neither vipers, nor their intestinal faeces, have a foul smell, and for this reason they do not leave behind a bad odour in the places inhabited by them. In the containers in which they are kept, while they are not yet dead, and despite the container being rather restricted, and without any useful breathing-holes, I have never smelt that nauseous stench which is mentioned by Aldrovando⁽¹⁴²⁾. I can confirm, however, that just as in many other snakes, if in the male viper the two genital members are squeezed, or the two quasi-seminal vesicles in the female which are in the vicinity of the two gates of nature, a certain, very delicate fluid spurts out, that has a heavy odour, pungently rotten, and peculiarly serpentine. Here, Gesnero⁽¹⁴³⁾ falls into error, in not being able to distinguish whether this stink comes from the intestinal faeces, or from the aforesaid water, but which was much better observed by Eliano, in the ninth book of his 'De Animalia' , 'μιγνύμενοι δὲ ἀλλήλοις οι ὄφεις βαρυτάτην ὀσμὴν ἀφιᾶσι(ν).'⁽¹⁴⁴⁾ Whereby, in order to rescue Martial, it might be possible to say to someone, wanting to explain the bad smell which Bassa has in those parts which it is more polite to remain silent about than to speak, that he attributes it with good reason to that which vipers exhale from places destined for procreation. Much more so as the word 'cubile', used by Martial, can not only be understood to mean a nest, or a place the viper sleeps, and lies latent in, but also, and perhaps more appropriately so here, grasping it in the significance in which it was made use of by many Romans, especially Cicero in a number of places, and the little daughter of King Nisus by Ovid, in the eighth of the 'Metamorphoses':

Nam pereant potius sperata cubilia, quam sim
Proditione potens.⁽¹⁴⁵⁾

Or Atlanta, in the tenth:

Quod si felicior essem,
Nec mihi coniugium fata importuna negarent,
Unus eras, cum quo sociare cubilia vellem.⁽¹⁴⁶⁾

    In the same sense, also, one can read in Genesis, in the Vulgate, "because thou wentest up to thy father's bed, and didst defile his couch"⁽¹⁴⁷⁾. The verb 'cubitare' in Plautus⁽¹⁴⁸⁾, in his plays 'Curculio', 'Pseudolus', and 'Stichus', as also the verb 'cubare' in 'Amphitrion', have the same significance, and leaving aside Greek, not to spend too long over it, our Tuscans, too, have used 'giacere[to lie]', in this sense. There are examples of it in Boccaccio⁽¹⁴⁹⁾, in the ninth novella, entitled, 'Giletta giacque con lui, ed ebbe due figliuoli'⁽¹⁵⁰⁾ and in novellas 63, 67, and 72. The master, Aldobrandino, has, "E ciò prova per isperienza, che egli dice che si tagliasse due vene, le quali sono dirieto alli orecchi, che colui, a cui fossero tagliate, ed aperte, non avrebbe podere di giacere con femmina."⁽¹⁵¹⁾ Likewise, in my written text about an extremely ancient life of St. Anthony: "Tu hai giaciuto, o malvagia femmina, col drudo tuo, e non hai temenza d?accostarti al santo Altare?"⁽¹⁵²⁾ The foul smell, then, only arises from the genital parts of vipers, and not from the whole body, or from their breath, or from intestinal excrement. The excrement not only has no foetor, but is, in the same way, odourless, as anyone who is inquisitive will be able to establish clearly for themselves from experience. Here, I do know the reason why Lucio Mainero, from the delicate fragrance of viperine dung, could have argued that the viper had a dry temperament. As, also, when the very learned Pietro Castelli⁽¹⁵³⁾, in the book called 'Odoriferous Hyaena', wrote that the dung of certain snakes carried the odour of musk, for if he meant to number the viper among these other snakes, I believe he was mistaken. Giovanni Rodio⁽¹⁵⁴⁾, a most erudite man, says the same thing, that in the course of medicinal observations, he declares having fully authenticated this odour of snake dung during a voyage he made in Mount Baldo⁽¹⁵⁵⁾, which by him was observed to be most abundant for vipers.

    If I move on, now, hither and thither, devoid of any order, and in confusion, please, do not frown, or be outraged; remind yourself, rather, that right at the beginning, I solemnly stated that I wished to write from one thing to the next, as I happened to remember it. Now, I am reminded that Galen, along with many distinguished contemporaries, teaches that the consumption of viperine flesh induces a burning and unquenchable thirst⁽¹⁵⁶⁾. This precept has suffered an exception in a virtuous and noble gentleman, an inhabitant of a body rather more delicate than not, and in the first flush of his youth. He, this current summer, endured for four weeks, continuously, a drink every morning, for breakfast, of a dram of viper's dust, diluted in a broth made with one half of a viper caught in the Neapolitan hills; to follow, next, he dined, on a fine dish made from bread soaked in viper's broth, seasoned (if I may be permitted this word) with viper's dust, and rendered delectable with the chopped heart, liver, and meat of that viper from which the broth was made; for drink, he had wine in which a viper had been drowned; for an afternoon snack, he grabbed an emulsion prepared from a viperine decoction and meat; for the evening, his supper consisted of a dish similar to the one in the morning; yet he avowed to me, all the time, that not only had he never experienced any thirst in this period, but also not from sticking to the drink, and only drinking as much as appeared necessary to him to live healthily. An old man, too, a septuagenarian, who fed himself for a month and a half on more than ninety vipers caught in the summer, and roasted, as eels are usually roasted by cooks, was never thirsty; and the same happened to a woman who was twenty-five years old. Out of curiosity, when I had some vipers prepared by roasting, I had never before smelt that highly sweet fragrance, which Severino had been told by reliable men emanates from certain roasted vipers to such an extent, that it made the whole neighbourhood come running in pursuit of the unusually delicate odour. Whether eating this flesh, however, produces in the young female body (as many writers would wish) those fitting proportions of parts, and of colours, which go by the name of beauty, and whether, in the senile state, it restores lost beauty, I have not yet come to see clearly; I imagine, nevertheless, that with regard to the proportions, and the harmoniousness of the parts, the viper may not be inferior to the hare, of which Martial humorously related:

Si quando leporem mittis mihi, Gellia, dicis:
'Formosus septem, Marce, diebus eris.'
Si non derides, si verum, lux mea, narras,
Edisti numquam, Gellia, tu leporem.⁽¹⁵⁷⁾

    Many learned, wise, and perspicacious men consider it unanswerable that in the preparation of troches⁽¹⁵⁸⁾ of vipers for use in theriacs, all vipers with eggs in their bodies are to be rejected as useless or harmful, and they base themselves on that which Galen wrote, namely, that the flesh of gravid vipers should not be incorporated into the theriac⁽¹⁵⁹⁾. My opinion, speaking always with every due respect, is to the contrary for I believe that if our assiduous druggists wanted to compose troches containing vipers without eggs, it would be necessary to make them out of males, and not females, because all females possess eggs, and particularly so if they are caught in the country at the time that was considered to be the most opportune by Damocrate, Critone⁽¹⁶⁰⁾. and Galen⁽¹⁶¹⁾. Those learned doctors advise well who, in 1579, were deputised to correct the Florentine formulary, and Aldrovando knew it, too, who writes not to be unduly averse should they have ova, provided that the vipers have not been fertilised by the males; and for it to be noted, he gives the indication that the eggs are not larger than poppy seeds, or granules of millet, adding that if the females have not conjoined with the males, the eggs never exceed this size. Not much different in opinion, it seems, were the above-mentioned revisers of the formulary, who reject only those vipers which have bulky eggs, lined with blood. However, to tell the truth, my own experiences do not support the words of Aldrovando⁽¹⁶²⁾, seeing that, at the end of the month of January, I shot many vipers, and found eggs in all of them, as large as the common olive, and streaked with blood; yet, it is credible that these eggs were not fertile and, so to speak, made fecund, because, being such, the vipers from them would have been born in the month of August; the bloody striation, also, is not a true sign of fecundity since, in eggs not yet born which can be found in the ovaries of castrated hens, and in hens which have not had contact with a cock, the same bloody striations can be seen. Therefore, having observed that in the seasons assigned for the hunting of vipers by Damocrate, Critone, Galen, and other Greeks and Arabs, who copied it from the afore-mentioned, large and bulky eggs are always to be found in these little snakes, I believe it is possible to say that when Galen spoke of pregnant vipers, he meant solely those vipers which have little vipers attached to eggs in the body, in a manner not too dissimilar to that we observed in the year gone by, if you recall, among fish called monkfish, and in other sea fish; and without these little vipers in the body, every viper is good for the theriac, whether the eggs are small or large, and with it being untrue that those having larger ones are meagre, pallid and wasted; for I have always found them to be very fat, larger than the others, and out of the ordinary; and in connection with the subject of fatness, it is worthy of consideration that, after having kept some vipers shut in without food for nine months, when I shot them, I encountered, as a result, a great deal of fat in that part which is called the 'rete', and which, by doctors, has come to be called the omentum, or zirbus.

    In these, my natural observations, I used up a huge quantity of vipers, making a daily ordeal of them; and in order to extract, as one says, the subtle from the subtle, I always grouped them, and preserved all their flesh and bones, from which, after having been dried in an oven and, later, at a brisk fire, with long and very arduous work, scorched and reduced to ashes, I extracted the salt using spring water. Purified, and reduced almost into a crystalline form, I wanted to conduct experiments on its efficacy, and found that it is exactly like all the other salts extracted from the ashes of all animals and all plants, which given indifferently, in a weight of around two to three and a half drachms, evacuate the bowels, as though one of those usual and ordinary medicines, termed 'lenitives' by doctors, had been drunk. These salts from ashes, in their purgative action, all have among them an equal potency, as has been noted hundreds of times, as much as does rhubarb, senna, turbith, agaric, jalap, mecioacan⁽¹⁶³⁾, and similar others, or as does plantain, cypress, lentiscus, suber, rind of pomegranate, broom, sorbus, and cornel cherry⁽¹⁶⁴⁾. No other difference could I ever distinguish in this than that of their external forms, which, however (as much as I could observe with every inquiring diligence), yielded neither more alive, nor more deceptive, their purgative faculty. Thus, it is that, not without reason, I was duped by those alchemical authors, who had such lynx-like eyes that they were able to find so many and such diverse virtues, including among them contrary ones, more in one salt than in another⁽¹⁶⁵⁾. I laughed at the little experience of the much accredited Basilio Valentino⁽¹⁶⁶⁾, who in his 'Aliography', apart from an infinity of vain imaginations, wrote that merely six grains of rhubarb salt, or senna, or esula, are enough to produce a good and reparative evacuation. I have said enough on this subject, however, in the discourse which I outlined for the first time last year, 'On the nature of salts and of their forms' ('Della natura dei sali e delle loro figure').

    Having read in the 'Historia Animalium', by Aristotle⁽¹⁶⁷⁾, that human saliva is harmful for most venomous beasts, I was seized by a whim to test this and to see whether it was true, especially for the viper, and all the more so, as Nicander⁽¹⁶⁸⁾ had stated it, and it was found confirmed by Galen⁽¹⁶⁹⁾, in many places, by Pliny⁽¹⁷⁰⁾, by Paolo Egineta⁽¹⁷¹⁾, by Serapion⁽¹⁷²⁾, by Avicenna⁽¹⁷³⁾, and by Lucretius⁽¹⁷⁴⁾ who, philosophising, sang:

Est itaque, ut serpens hominis que tacta salivis
Disperit, ac sese mandendo conficit ipsa.⁽¹⁷⁵⁾

    These ancients are supported by many moderns, and in particular by Cardinal Ponzetto, Bertuccio of Bologna, Gesnero, Zacuto, Tommaso Campanella, Marc'Antonio Alaimo, Lelio Bisciola⁽¹⁷⁶⁾, and by the most learned and celebrated, Ulysses Aldrovando⁽¹⁷⁷⁾, who not only has it as confirmed that human saliva kills snakes, but also discusses it and provides the reason, reducing it, in the end, to that vain and chimerical noun of the much vaunted 'antipathy'. Pier Giovanni Fabbro, and Marc' Aurelio Severino, however, prizing it little, gave as the most powerful reason, sal ammoniac⁽¹⁷⁸⁾, which they described as most plentiful in all sorts, but above all in human saliva. I enclosed six selected vipers, therefore, in a large container and, for fifteen mornings in a row, one by one, holding their mouths open, ensured that some fasting men filled them up with sputum, and shutting their mouth, constrained them by force to swallow it down. All lived, and are still alive, and have never been overtaken by illness. Instead, from the sweetness of their new and unusual diet, they seem to me rather more beautiful and refreshed than usual. Since Aldrovando also writes that charlatans, as soon as they have grabbed hold of snakes, sprinkle them with saliva, by virtue of which they are enfeebled, and loose the harmfulness of their venom, I wanted to try and test this too. I remained certain that it does not come even a little close to the truth, or not at all. Moreover, all the animals which I had bitten by vipers, prepared in this manner, died, but the vipers, from the washes of saliva, were not weakened at all, and disdainful and proud, flicked more often the acute, bipartite splendour of their tongues.

    It does not occur to me as unusual, however, that this truth was unknown to so many writers, because they did not, perhaps, going behind the voices of the common masses, conduct the experiment, all the more so as prodding a viper's mouth is not the most enjoyable distraction in the world. Furthermore, who, being bitten by one, would see his injury as good, when it can also be said to him, along with Ecclesiasticus,

"Who will pity a charmer that is bitten with a serpent, or any such as come near wild beasts?"⁽¹⁷⁹⁾

    I am astonished by Galen, who in the tenth book of the potency of simple medicaments, after having said that the sputum of a fasting man kills scorpions, adds having seen it with his own eyes, and of having performed the fullest experiments on it many times over⁽¹⁸⁰⁾. If the scorpions, and the human beings who were born in those times in Rome and Pergamon, were made like the human beings and scorpions of Tuscany, I am within my rights to ask Galen (a man, besides, who in medicine, after Hippocrates, had no equal) to pardon me, if I do not wish to believe that he had experience of it; and if he did try it out, perhaps it was only the once, in which event the scorpion died by chance, and not because of saliva; because on many occasions I have persisted for six days, continuously, in getting fasting and thirsty men to spit, every morning, on some scorpions, and the scorpions never died. They died quite infallibly at the end of twenty minutes when three or four drops of olive oil were placed on the back of each one of them; therefore, if I was astonished by Galen, I wondered much more at Albertus Magnus who, in the book of animals, relates that having immersed a scorpion in a flask of olive oil, it stayed alive for twenty days, moving and circling around at the bottom of that oil⁽¹⁸¹⁾. In a similar vase, a little less than full of oil, I confined a viper which floated alive there for sixty hours but, overwhelmed by exhaustion in the end, it gave itself up, little by little, to die at the bottom of the vase. Before it died, it made every possible natural effort to hold its muzzle out of that liquid; such times that it succeeded in projecting its head outside, it opened its mouth as widely as it could in order to capture that air which was denied to it under the oil. More violent than olive oil was the most dreadful oil of tobacco⁽¹⁸²⁾ for another viper; thus, as that noble anatomist, Tilmanno, injured it right through the leathery skin of the arch of the back by a needle, threaded with a double-filament of thread soaked in that oil, and with the filament having passed through the wound, in less than four minutes, after some strange turns, it fell down moribund, convulsed and rigid, as though it had been turned into bronze, but a moment later came to, limp and weak-kneed, as though it had been dead for the previous two days. A highly similar death in all respects underwent another viper in the throat of which four or five drops of the aforesaid oil of tobacco were introduced; all the same, if that last viper died, several eels did not die which, having been dealt with the same hand, were at that instant thrown into water; and yet, a little before they were dead, many other eels wounded in the back by that same needle, that had in its hole the filament dipped in tobacco oil, although thrown quickly into the water, were observed, in dying, to adopt a certain whitening of colour, although when alive, they tended to be blackish.⁽¹⁸³⁾

Continued...

Page 5 of 6: /1 /2 /3 /4 /5 /6

---

Notes:

¹⁴¹. 'That from which the fox flees, the viper's nest,
I'd rather breathe, than what you smell, Bassa." - my translation of the lines from Martial's Epigrams, Book IV: 'In Bassam'.

¹⁴². "Insuper inter alias viperae proprietates, hanc a natura congenitam habent, ut gravissimum spirent odorem. Ideo capsulae, in quibus viperae, ad concinnanda varia medicamenta, a Pharmacopolis servantur, quando recluduntur, ob tetrum odorem quamdam veluti nauseam generant. Immo cavernae, in quibus brumali tempore stabulantur, magis quam praedictae capsulae pestiferum odorem exhalant." - 'Serpentum, et draconum historiae'; Ulisse Aldrovandi.

¹⁴³. Konrad Gessner, (1516 -1565 ACE), a Swiss natural scientist and biographer, wrote the 'Historiae Animalium', a work often considered as a beginning in modern zoology. He was a talented linguist, and some of his writings, such as the 'Bibliotheca universalis'(1574) reflect this ability. In this context also, however, he edited the works of Claudius Aelianus, and translated much of it into Latin, in an edition which appeared in 1556.

¹⁴⁴. 44 " ... Cum inter se coeunt serpentes, odorem exhalant gravissimum" - Liber IX; 'De natura animalium': Claudius Aelianus, Friedrich Jacobs translation, (Jena, 1832).
('When serpents mingle with each other they emit an unwholesome smell.' - my translation of the same).

¹⁴⁵. "Rather let my hopes of marriage die, than that I be capable of betrayal!" - Book VIII; 'Metamorphoses': Ovid.- Translated by A. Kline.

¹⁴⁶."But if I were luckier, if the harsh fates did not prevent my marriage, you would be the one I would want to share my bed with" - Book X; 'Metamorphoses': Ovid.- Translated by A. Kline.

¹⁴⁷. "quia ascendisti cubile patris tui, et maculasti stratum ejus." - Genesis: 49; 4.

¹⁴⁸. Titus Maccius Plautus (c. 254 -184 BCE), was a Roman playwright. His comedies are some of the earliest works in Latin literature still surviving, and besides those mentioned by Redi, form a very long list.

¹⁴⁹. Giovanni Boccaccio, (1313 -1375 ACE) was an Italian author, and poet. He knew Petrarch, and is important for his creative contribution to the renewal of Italian in 'Il Quattrocento'.

¹⁵⁰. The quotation is from the 'Decameron' by Boccaccio, one of his most famous works:
"Gillette lies with him in her stead, and has two sons by him;" - from the Third Day; Novel IX: Decameron, by Boccaccio, translated by J.M. Rigg

¹⁵¹. "And this proves from experience, that he says that if the two veins, the ones that proceed towards the ears, are severed, the person in whom they are cut, and opened, cannot lie with a woman."
Not much is known of the thirteenth century Maestro Aldobrandino, or Aldebrandin of Sienna, an Italian physician who practised mostly in France. In a letter dated 1256, written to Beatrice of Savoy, Countess of Provence, the mother of four queens, "of the queen of France, the queen of England, the queen of Germany, and the countess of Anjou", the work for which he is most known, 'Le livre pour la santé du corps garder et de chacun membre, pour soi garder et conserver en santé, composé à la requête du roi de France", is mentioned as having been written specifically to meet her request, and was a compilation from various other famous authors. In the 'Vocabolario della Crusca(1612)', two copies of originals attributed to him are listed, a treatise on medicine, and a "Trattato delle virtù del ramerino(rosemary)".

¹⁵². "You lay down, wicked woman, with your amorous inclination, and have no fear in approaching the holy Altar?"

¹⁵³. Pietro Castelli, (1574 -1662 ACE), an Italian physician and botanist, was born in Rome, where he graduated in 1617. He studied under the botanist Andrea Cesalpino, and was professor at Rome, from 1597 to 1634, before he went to Messina. He laid out the botanical gardens there in 1635, and cultivated many exotic medicinal plants. 'Hyaena odorifera' was published in 1638 by J.-F. Bianco.

¹⁵⁴. Joannes R(h)ode, [latinised to Rhodius], (1587 -1659 ACE), was a Danish medical writer and antiquary. He studied at Marburg and Padua, and was appointed professor of botany and director of the botanical gardens in Padua. He also died there.

¹⁵⁵. Monte Baldo, from the German "wald", or forest, was called Mons Polninus in Roman times. It is situated in the provinces of Verona and Trento, in Italy, and possesses a rich diversity of natural landscape, ancient rocks, flora and fauna.

¹⁵⁶. "ἡ μὲν δὴ τῶν ἐχιδνῶν σὰρξ ἐις τοσοῦτον ἣχει τῆς ξηραντικῆς δυνάμεως· ἐπεὶ δ' ἔνιοι τῶν φαγόντων αὐτὴν ἑάλωσαν δίψει σφοδοτάτῳ" - 'περὶ τἠς τῶν ἁπλῶν φάρμακῶν.." : Κλαύδιος Γαληνός.
["Sane viperarum caro adeo ingentem obtinet desiccandi facultatem, ut quidam eam edere vehementissima cruciati sint siti" - 'De simplicium medicamentorum temperamentis ac facultatibus', vol. 12; Galeni opera omnia: edited by C. G. Kühn, 1821 - 1833.]

¹⁵⁷. 'If, when you send a hare to me, Gellia, you say:
"Marcus, you will become beautiful within seven days."
If not derisory, if you speak truly, my eye's delight,
You, Gellia, have never ever eaten hare.' - my translation of 'Ad Gelliam': Martialis Epigrammatum, lib. V.

¹⁵⁸. Galen mentions in 'De theriaca ad Pamphilianum' that Andromachus, the source for many preparations of antidotes, as also Crito, reserved the word theriac to denote only those preparations which contained viper's flesh. Pliny confirms this in 'Natural History', saying that 'pastilles' were prepared from vipers, known to the Greeks as 'theriaci', and adds that they could only be made fron vipers ("fiunt ex vipera pastilli, qui theriaci vocantur a graecis...significandum videtur e vipera tantum hoc fieri." - 'Naturalis Historia XXIX'). The word troches, derived from the Greek, 'τροχός', a wheel, referred to the shape of the preparation. By the 13th.century, the Italian drug trade, which had the all-important export of viperine troches, had become well established, although in some European states, later, the law required the production of local treacle (from the Italian, teriàca, or triàca, for 'theriac'). These preparations found widespread use in conditions which caused wasting, as antidotes, and even as a universal panacea, especially when live vipers were not available. Their fat, when mixed with suitable oil, such as that of laurel, storax, olibanum, and others, was widely used in poultices and in unguents.

¹⁵⁹. "ὅσαι δὲ ἔγκύμονἐς εἰσι τῶν εχιδνῶν, παραιτεῖσθαι ταύτας." - περὶ ἀντίδοτῶν; Κλαύδιος Γαληνός;
["foetas viperas repudiare oportet" - 'De antidotis', Vol. 14; Galeni opera omnia: edited by C. G. Kühn, 1821 - 1833.]

¹⁶⁰. Titus Statilius Crito, a source for Galen, lived around 100 AD. Born into a wealthy family, he became Trajan's physician. Apart from a famous historical work, 'Gothic wars', a record of Trajan's campaign in Dacia, he wrote one of the earliest medical treatises on cosmetics. Galen refers to him, in places, and in 'De theriaca ad Pamphilianum' states:
"Κρίτων δ' ἔγραψε περὶ αὐτῆς οὔτως, ὅτι τὰ θηρία περὶ τα τελευταῖα τοῦ ἦρος, ἢ τρυγητῷ συλλέγειν δεῖ..." ["Crito vero de ea ita scripsit, viperas in veris fine aut vindemia colligenda... " - 'De theriaca ad Pamphilianum', Vol. 14; Galeni opera omnia: edited by C. G. Kühn, 1821 - 1833.]

¹⁶¹. "κάλλιστος οὖν ἐστι καιρὸς ὀ μεταξὺ τοὑτον...παυομένου μὲν τοῦ ἧρος, οὔπω δ' ἠργμένου θέρους, ἢ εἰ χειμέρον ἐπὶ πολὺ τὸ ἔαρ γίγνοιτο, κατὰ τὴν ἀρχὴν τοῦ θέρους, οὐ κατὺ πολὺ τὸ τῆς τῶν πλειάδων ἐπιτολῆς." - περὶ ἀντίδοτῶν; Κλαύδιος Γαληνός.
["Optimum itaque tempus est quod haec intercedit... desinente quidem vere, nondum autem inchoata aestate, vel si ver admodum hiemale exiterit, aestatis initio non longe a Pleiadum ortu." - 'De antidotis', Vol. 14; Galeni opera omnia: edited by C. G. Kühn, 1821 - 1833.]

¹⁶². "Quapropter, licet in viperis foeminis ova instar granorum milii, vel seminum papaveris reperiantur, nihilominus eas nunquam gravidas, nisi post congressum, nuncupare poterimus. ... Aliter etiam dubitationem poterimus demolire, si dicamus viperas ovis redundantes, etiam postquam semen receperit, ad antidota esse idoneas, antequam ova augeantur, quae nisi crescant, non possunt tale detrimentum carne viperarum afferre, quin hae bestiae in theriaca adhiberi possint." - 'Serpentum, et draconum historiae'; Ulisse Aldrovandi.

¹⁶³. Rhubarb(Rheum spp.) root and senna (Cassia spp) leaves are well known purgatives. Turbith, or turpeth root (Ipomoea turpetum), is a species of convulvulus, found throughout India, where it is called 'kalapani'. White agaric is the purgative mushroom, Boletus agaricum. The purgative action of jalap (Ipomea spp.), a Mexican climbing plant, is obtained from the tubers. Meciocan is also a convulvulus plant, native to Brazil, and is known as white rhubarb.

¹⁶⁴. Plantain seeds (of Plantago psyllium) are used as laxatives. Lentiscus is the Pistachio lentiscus. Suber is latin for cork. Fruit of the sorbus, sometimes called the 'service tree' and pomegranate rind both receive mention from Celsus for their astringent action. Cornel cherry (Cornus spp.) is also known as dogwood.

¹⁶⁵. Lynx-like eyes, because of the fabled acute eyesight of this creature, and in particular, to the reference made to it by the erudite Giambattista della Porta, (c.1535 - 1615 ACE), in his book, "Magia Naturalis"(1589), in which he says vision, for the 'magician', should be about ' weighing things which present themselves, with lynx like eyes, so that having examined the thing, it may be carefully applied' ["Lynceis oculis perpendens, quae se sibi demonstrant, ut re inspecta sedulo operetur"]. The lynx was used in the frontispiece of several books printed at the time, including the publications of Galileo, and was soon made famous by the foundation of the Accademia dei Lincei, ('Academy of the Lynxes') in 1603, by Federico Cesi, (1585 - 1630 ACE), the group which della Porta himself joined in his final years

¹⁶⁶. Basil Valentinus, although known as the author of several alchemical works, including the highly influential 'Currus Triumphalis Antimonii' (The triumphal chariot of antimony) remains an uncertain figure. Reputed to have been born much earlier, possibly in the first half of the 14th century, his works are all from the 15th century, and his manuscripts, said to have been buried in a pillar in St. Peter's Abbey, at Erfurt, in Germany, only revealed their presence when a thunderbolt shattered the pillar inside the church. Liebniz did not believe in his existence, and thought that the name served as a pseudonym for Thölde, the first translator of his work in 1604.

¹⁶⁷. This is perplexing, because it appears to me that Redi is referring to a sentence in 'ΠΕΡΙ ΤΑ ΖΩΙΑ ΙΣΤΟΡΙΩΝ ΒΙΒΛΙΟΝ H'' (H.A; viii. 28):
"Πάντων δὲ χαλεπώτερά ἐστι τὰ δήγματα τῶν ἰοβόλων, ἐὰν τύχῃ ἀλλήλων ἐδηδοκότα, οἷον σκορπίον ἔχις, Ἔστι δὲ τοῖς πλείστοις αὐτῶν πολέμιον τὸ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου πτύελον." - 'Περὶ τα ζώα ιστοριαι'; Ἀριστοτέλης.
["All dangerous animals have a poisonous bite that is worse, as if they devour each other; the viper, the scorpion, for example. For most of these (bites), human spit is a potent combatant" Bk. VIII: ch. xxviii; 'Historia Animalium' by Aristotle.]
This ambiguous statement has been interpreted, certainly by most translators, in the sense that Pliny, Galen and others have meant, that human saliva is lethal for venomous beasts (see, for example, 'The works of Aristotle' translated by D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson). However, in some translations, for instance, in 'Histoire des Animaux d'Aristote', by Barthélemy-Saint Hilaire, the 'hostile' action is specified as against their bites, and not the beasts. Unlike Nicander, Aristotle uses the word 'πτύελον', derived from the Greek verb πτύω, meaning 'to spit', as opposed to 'σίαλον', or saliva, and if its combative action was against the bites, and not the beasts, then the latter action referred to by Pliny, Galen, and others (see note which follow) has nothing in common with the assertion by Aristotle, as has been inferred by so many writers and commentators subsequently, including Redi, Lynn Thorndike, or Francis Adams, in the commentary to the works of Paulus Aegineta, to mention but a few.

¹⁶⁸. 'πολλάκι καὶ βροτέην σιάλων ὑποέτρεσαν ὀδμήν.' - 'Θηριακά': Νίκανδρος από την Κολοφώνα.
['Saepe etiam humanae terrentur odore salivae' - Gorris, Jean (de). Nicandri Theriaca, interprete Ioannis Gorraeo' (1622)].

¹⁶⁹. "καθάπερ οὐδ' ἕτι σκορπίο τις ἐπιπτύας δὶς ἢ τρὶς νήστης εὐθέως ἀναιρεῖ τὸ ζῶον." - 'Περὶ Εὐχυμίας καὶ Κακοχυμίας Τροφῶν'; Κλαύδιος Γαληνός
["veluti et scorpionem, si quis in eum bis terve jejunus conspuat, statim perire" - 'De probis pravisque alimentorum succis', Vol. 6; Galeni opera omnia: edited by C. G. Kühn, 1821 - 1833.]
"οὂτω γοῦν καὶ σκορπίον ἀναιρήσεις ἐπιπτύων νῆστις" - 'περὶ εὐχυμίας καὶ κακοχυμίας τροφῶν'; Κλαύδιος Γαληνός.
["ita quoque et scorpium necaveris, si jejunus illi inspueris - 'De inaequali intemperie liber', Vol. 7; Galeni opera omnia: edited by C. G. Kühn, 1821 - 1833.]
See also his own attestation of having conducted the experiment on the scorpiocidal nature of saliva ("ceu alicubi etiam Nicander poeta refert) by spitting on a scorpion, with and without incantation, in both of which cases leading to its death, in 'De simplicium medicamentorum temperamentis ac facultatibus' (vol. 12 of the Kühn edition)

¹⁷⁰. Amongst other places in Pliny:
"et tamen omnibus hominibus contra serpentes inest venenum: ferunt ictas saliva ut ferventis aquae contactu fugere; quod si in fauces penetraverit, etiam mori, idque maxime humani ieiuni oris." - Liber VII; "Omnium vero in primis ieiuam salivam contra serpentes praesidio esse docuimus" - Liber XXVIII; 'Naturalis Historia': Pliny the Elder, ed. by Karl Friedrich Theodor Mayhoff.
["But the fact is, that all men possess in their bodies a poison which acts upon serpents, and the human saliva, it is said, makes them take to flight, as though they had been touched with boiling water. The same substance, it is said, destroys them the moment it enters their throat, and more particularly so, if it should happen to be the saliva of a man who is fasting." - Bk 7; "But it is the fasting spittle of a human being, that is, as already stated by us, the sovereign preservative against the poison of serpents" - Bk 28; 'The Natural History': Pliny the Elder, ed. by John Bostock, and H.T.Riley.]

¹⁷¹. "Saliva; that of men in a fasting state is particularly discutient and detergent;...It is likewise most destructive to those venomous animals which prove fatal to men." Volume 3 (Bk VII) of 'The Seven Books of Paulus Aegineta' translated by Francis Adams.The destructive action of saliva is discussed briefly also in the commentary following the first chapter, in Book V

¹⁷². Several medical personalities were named Serapion. One, an Alexandrian, mentioned by Galen for his vanity, lived around 200 B.C. Another, Yahya ibn Sarafiyun, or Yohannan bar Seraphion (John, son of Serapion), was a ninth century Damascene. There was also an Arabian who lived towards the end of the tenth century AD called Serapion. His work was published in Latin from the Arabic under the title 'Liber de semplici medicina', in Milan and Venice, and again, later, in Lyon and Strasbourg. Some of these editions included the 'Practica Jo. Serapionis dicta breviarium', but the author of this is now thought to be Jean, the Damascene. Serapion is also mentioned by Chaucer in 'The Canterbury Tales', see note on Gilbertus Anglicus above. ("Sputum ... contrarium omnibus animalibus .. venenum et occidit scorpionem", see Cap. 447, 'De Simplicibus'.)

¹⁷³.

لعاب. اسموم; يعاونه اللعاب اسموم و اذا تفل الصايم علي العقرب مرارا مات; الكتاب الثاني; كتاب القانون في الطب: ابن سينا.
و مما يقتل الحيات ثفل الصايم في فيها و خصوصا ان اخذ في فمه نوشاذر - فصل في طرد الحيات -فصل في طرد العقارب و قتالها - العقارب يقتلها ثفل الصايم; الكتاب الرابع 'كتاب القانون في الطب; ابن سينا.

"Saliva: ... Spittle is of help with poisons. And when a fasting man spits on a scorpion several times, it dies" - Bk. II; 'The Canon of Medicine': Ibn Sina. In the second statement, on the use of the spittle of a fasting man to chase away vipers, Ibn Sina adds that this is especially effective if sal ammoniac (nûshâdhir) is kept in the mouth. In the third entry, he says that spittle of a fasting man is scorpiocidal.

¹⁷⁴. Titus Lucretius Carus (ca. 99 - 55 BCE) was a Roman poet and philosopher. His only known work is the epic philosophical poem titled 'De Rerum Natura' ('On the Nature of Things').

¹⁷⁵. 'Spit on a serpent, and his vigour flies,
He straight devours himself, and quickly dies.' - Lucretius: De Rerum Natura; Book IV.
["Crachez sur un serpent, sa force l'abandonne,
Il se mange lui-même, il se dévore, il meurt". Voltaire remarks wryly, "Il y a un peu de contradiction à le peindre languissant et se dévorant lui-même". Under 'Serpent', in the 'Dictionnaire Philosophique']

¹⁷⁶. The Cardinal Ponzetti was possibly Ferdinando, (1444-1527), who was born in Florence, and who studied theology, philosophy, and medicine. In his book 'Tertia pars naturalis Phylosophie', published in 1518, he is quoted in 'A History of Magic and Experimental Science'(1947-1953), by Lynn Thorndike, as having discussed many natural phenomena, including the interpretation of dreams, and poisons.
Bertuccio 'bolognese' was probably Mondino dei Liuzzi?s student, Niccolò Bertruccio (d. 1347), mentioned by Guy de Chauliac as 'Magister meus Bertucius' (tratt.,1, doctr. 1, c.1) in Bologna.
Tommaso Campanella, (1568 -1639), baptized Giovanni Domenico Campanella, was an Italian philosopher, theologian, astrologer, and poet. He spent 27 years in prison where he wrote most of his works.
Marc'Antonio Alaimo was a highly celebrated Sicilian doctor who founded the Accademia di Medicina in Palermo. He dedicated himself to the victims of the plague which struck in Sicily in 1624, during which he is said to have devised an effective remedy. He wrote, on this subject, the 'Discorso intorno alla preservazione del morbo contagioso, è mortale che regna al presente in Palermo, et in altre citta e terre del regno di Sicilia' (1625), and, also, a 'Medicinale Patrocinum' demonstrating the excellence of Sardinian medicine.
Bisciola Lelio, [Laelii Bisciolae], (1539-1629), was an Italian Jesuit, who died in Milan, where he was a professor of ancient languages and scritpure. He was the author of an encyclopaedic work, the 'Horarum subcessivarum tomus alter, libri 37', Ingoldstadt, 1611.

¹⁷⁷. Aldrovandi discusses human saliva, along with citations from Pliny, Lucretius and others, under the chapter heading of 'Antipathia', and states: "Philosophi perscrutantur, cur Serpens jejuni hominis sputo necari possit: et tandem in hanc veniunt sententiam id fieri, ob singularem inter utrumque antipathiam, siquidem Serpens frigidae, et siccae est temperaturae, homo autem calido, et humido temperamento est" - 'Serpentum, et draconum historiae'; Ulisse Aldrovandi.

¹⁷⁸. Ammonium chloride salt is not known to exist in human saliva in significant quantities. As noted also by Aldrovandi, Avicenna, along with other Muslim physicians, says that human saliva is vipericidal, especially when mixed with sal ammoniac, and recommends sprinkling sal ammoniac dissolved in water as a deterrent against vipers (see earlier quote). The origins of the sal ammoniac theory may well lie in these assertions.

¹⁷⁹. "Quis miserebitur incantatori a serpente percusso, et omnibus qui appropriant bestiis?" [Sirach.12:13.]

¹⁸⁰. "ὕστερον δ' ἐγὼ χωρὶς τῆς ἐπῳδῆς ἐθεασάμην ἐπὶ τῷ σιάλῳ μόνῳ τὸν σκορπίον ἀποθανόντα καὶ τοῦτ? αὐτὸ πάσχοντα ταχέως μὲν ἐπὶ τοῦ τῶν πεινώντων τε καὶ διψώντων πτυέλου, βραδέως δὲ ἐπὶ τῶν ἐμπεπλησμένον ἐδεσμάτων τε καὶ πομάτων, ἐπὶ δὲ τῶν ἄλλων ἀνάλογον." - Κλαύδιος Γαληνός; περὶ κραρεῶσ καὶ δυνάμεῶς τἠς τῶν ἁπλῶν φάρμακῶν.
["At postea ego absque incantatione a sola saliva occisum vidi scorpium, idque celeriter a saliva esurentium aut sitientium, tarde autem ab illis qui cibo potuque fuerant impleti, in aliis autem proportione." - 'Liber X; De simplicium medicamentorum temperamentis ac facultatibus': Galeni opera omnia, Vol. XII, Kuhn ed., 1821 - 1833]

¹⁸¹. "Hoc quod vidi de hoc animali (scorpion) est que cum mersisses in oleo olive xxj diebus vixit in vitro ambulans in fundo olei..xxij die mortuus fuit" - 'De animalibus'; Albertus Magnus.

¹⁸². Tobacco, called 'yelt' in Mexican, derived its name after the discovery of it by Columbus, in Tabagonel in the New World. It was sent by Hermandes of Toledo to Portugal, and was cultivated in the royal gardens at Lisbon by 1558. The French ambassador, there, Jean Nicot, whose name is used for one of the constituents of tobacco, nicotine, sent seeds early on, in 1560, to France. The credit for the introduction of tobacco to Rome is usually given to Cardinal Prospero of S.Croce (1514-1589), hence its name in Italy, 'herba santa(-croce)'. He was the Papal Nuncio in Lisbon, at about the same time. Verses quoted from the herbarium of Castore Durante, (1529 - 1590), celebrate this event, likening it to the arrival of the Holy Cross.
"Hanc Sanctacrucius, quum Nuntius esset
Sedis Apostolicae Lusitanas missus ad oras,
Hoc asportavit Romanae, ad commoda Gentis,
Ut proavi Sanctae Crucis Lignum ante tulere.
Omnis Christiadum quo nunc respublica gaudet,
Et Sanctae Crucis illuslris domus ipsa vocatur,
Corporis atque animae nostrae studiosa salutis." (verses from Castor Durante).
["Herb of immortal fame!
Which hither first by Santa Croce came,
When he (his time of nunciature expired) Back from the Court of Portugal retired;
Even as his predecessors, great and good,
Brought home the Cross, whose consecrated wood,
All Christendom now with its presence blesses;" - Translated by Joel Shew M.D in 'Tobacco: Its History, Nature, and Effects on the Body and Mind' (1849).]
In 'Esperienze intorno alla generazione degl'insetti', Redi again remarked on the lethal effects of the 'veleno terribilissimo' of tobacco administered to animals, although 'mille volte provata e riprovata', that the animal was quite harmless when consumed afterwards.

¹⁸³. Experiments of this nature on the oil of tobacco were conducted also by the Royal Society in London, and other institutions, at about the same time. An account of one such experiment, 'proving' that the oil was nothing other than the 'Duke of Florence's poison' was observed by Samuel Pepys, (1633-1703), as follows:
On Wednesday 3 May 1665, Samuel Pepys went "out to Gresham College, and saw a cat killed with the Duke of Florence's poyson, and saw it proved that the oyle of tobacco drawn by one of the Society(*) do the same effect, and is judged to be the same thing with the poyson both in colour and smell, and effect."
Robert Hooke(1635-1703) also witnessed it, as is listed in his folio for May 3rd. 1665. 'Dan Cox (*) discourse of oyle of Tobacco.'
[*"Mr. Daniel Coxe read an account of the effects of tobacco-oil distilled in a retort, by one drop of which given at the mouth he had killed a lusty cat, which being opened, smelled strongly of the oil, and the blood of the heart more strongly than the rest ?. One drop of the Florentine 'oglio di tobacco' being again given to a dog, it proved stupefying and vomitive, as before" - Birch?s "History of the Royal Society," vol, ii., pp. 42, 43. Daniel Coxe, (1640-1730), incidentally, was a physician to Charles II, and a Governor of West Jersey, a place which he never visited.
Tobacco oil was in production, industrially, by the end of the 17th. century, in France.