When Alexander waked, he told his friends the dream, and
sent some out in quest of this little root. The root (as story says)
was found, and Ptolemy was healed, so were many soldiers likewise,
that had been wounded with the same kind of darts.
Cardanus "Somniorum Synesiorum", lib. 4, chap. 2. "Narrat Plinius 35
lib. Nat. Hist, vir ab omnia superstitione alienissimus, Historiam
hujusmodi. 'Nuper cujusdam militantis in Praetorio mater vidit in
quiete, ut radicem sylvestris Rosae (quam Cynorrhodon vocant) blanditam
sibi aspectu pridie in Fruteto, mitteret filio bibendam: In Lusitania
res gerebatur, Hispaniae, proxima parte: casuque accidit, ut milite a
morsu Canis incipiente aquas expavescere superveniret epistola orantis
ut paretet religioni; servatusque est ex insperato, & postea
quisquis auxilium simile tentavit.' "
i. e. In his natural history, Pliny, a man the most averse to
superstition, relates to us the following passage. Lately, the mother
of one of the guards, who attended upon the General, was admonished by
a vision in her sleep, to send her son a draught composed of the
decoction of the root of a wild rose, (which they call Cynorrhodon)
with the agreeable look whereof she had been mightily taken the day
before, as she was passing through a coppice. The seat of the war at
that time lay in Portugal, in that part of it next adjoining to Spain,
that a soldier, beginning to apprehend mighty dangerous consequences
from the bite of a dog, the letter came unexpectedly from her,
entreating him to pay a blind obedience to this superstition.
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