Author: Pierre Bulliard
Printed in Paris 1784 De l’Impreimerie de Monsier
If this book had been printed today it would probably end up in the shelves dedicated to hobby, near the cookbooks and not far from those concerning potted plants. And it would not be wrong at all because this was the intention of the author, Pierre Bulliard who was a doctor, but also a botanist and an engraver; the sterilized specialization of our days was at that time unknown.
Infatti lo scrive subito nell’incipit: << The main purpose of this work is to provide a clear understanding of some plants whose use could be a source of more or less serious accidents; warn against the type of danger to which each of these plants exposes; indicate the specific symptoms of any kind of poisoning; and finally teach the fastest and most effective means to remedy the accidents caused by poisonous plants...»
Full illusionist spirit: science must serve humanity, especially the people. And in fact continues:
<< Cosa succede quando ignoriamo che non c’è quasi nessuna differenza tra una pianta che usiamo comunemente come cibo o medicina e una pianta che potrebbe essere un veleno mortale per noi? […] Possiamo sospettare che il latte del Tithymales, la linfa dell’alloro, i frutti della Belladonna […] siano tutti veleni estremamente pericolosi?>>
And it is so deeply rooted this thought that just in the forehead there is the price of the work: 6 lire for the tome without prints and 94 with the tables. But it was a necessary effort to make everyone accessible to knowledge and blur the peasant legends that passed down from the Middle Ages.
What perhaps even Buillard expected, after so many clarifications, is that the book passed under the strict revision of the State police that hijacked him fearing that the scholar would teach people to prepare poisons to commit suicide or poison others; for rulers knowledge was a dangerous thing in the hands of the people.
I do not understand why there must always be this name of the "people" or even "people" ignorant, bad, ready to do and get hurt. For charity, cretins have always been there and always will be there, but it seems to me that more and more often they are at the top of the chain of power rather than in the woods looking for mushrooms. However, by deepening my research, I find out what I should have expected: the fear of the police was not so much directed at the possibility of poisoning others, how much the use of erbe to procure abortion.
I mean, bem.or in 1784, in five years the French Revolution will burst, and at the moment the police let run and the book is published. Doctor Buillard knows nothing else except that, left orphaned very soon, died forty in 1793, perhaps in a forest, surely murdered. We do not know if by the precise will of someone and if in mounds of the revolution.
But a book is never only the story of who wrote it, but also that of those who possessed him; and this is even more true for this tomo in which I found two handwritten sheets, probably in the 1800s, in which someone notes important things but above all the despair of doctors in trying to recover people from a mushroom poisoning so in addition to hismetic remedies (i.e. the very dangerous practice of procuring vomiting) they also added
<< Conviene dunque liberarle con i purganti e persino impiegare clisteri di una decozione di tobacco, to promptly evacuate what they contain. >
As we survived eating poisonous mushrooms and then the remedies of a medicine that had just begun a scientific path, I don't know, but perhaps we owe it to doctors like Buillard, who studied plants, drew them and printed two types of volumes so that even those who did not have many means could benefit. I think it's called collective good.
link to the video at ASMR https://youtu.be/L69z12zAq1g?is=BiAuKUwfHXPvrMwy
The book is available. You can contact me here https://www.ninajkors.com/contatti/
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