Histoire Naturelle des Indes
54 of 122
Accession number: MA 3900
Credit: The Morgan Library & Museum. Bequest of Clara S. Peck, 1983.
Title: Histoire Naturelle des Indes [supplied on an 18th century title page]
Contents: 199 images of West Indian plants, animals and human life, with accompanying manuscript captions written in late sixteenth-century French.
Medium: Most of the illustrations consist of a black chalk underdrawing and a combination of pen and brown ink with watercolor; on some images selected areas have also been glazed with a gum.
Dimensions: Binding: 30 x 21 cm; individual leaves: 29.3 x 19.7 cm.
Binding: Bound or rebound in brown leather in the late 18th century.
Pagination: Penciled folio numbers (1–125) in lower right corner of each page were added by The Morgan Library & Museum. Folios 92v–93, 93v–94, and 95v–96 are fold-out leaves.
Histoire Naturelle des Indes
Caiamant (River Caiman)
This fish lives in the woods and fresh water rivers. It has in its head a peculiar stone for those persons suffering from gravel (in their urine) or from kidney stones. The Indians put the stone in the fire until it is all red, then, in order to cool it, they put it in the potion or drink of the person affected with gravel. The patient having drunk it, the stones which he ejects are broken up in his body and reduced to mud. It (the animal) also has four glands under its armpits giving an excellent perfume.
Covllevvre Noire (Black Snake)
Being nine or ten feet long they are good eating.
Racelle (Racelle Root)
This root serves the Indians well when bitten by the snake. Even when they pursue them in the woods to bite and injure them, they throw some of this same root in front of the snakes which instantly withdraw.
Covllevvre Blanche (White Snake)
Very poisonous and dangerous. Finding Indians in the woods they attack them in order to harm them.
Histoire Naturelle des Indes
Illustrated manuscript, ca. 1586
Bequest of Clara S. Peck, 1983; MA 3900 (fol. 53v–54)
