About the consumption of poisonous foods that are harmful and fatal to men, but useful, beneficial, and provide pleasurable sustenance to other animals in these parts and Indies.

Translated by Kendal Simmons ’23

The second chapter of the seventh book will deal with yucca, which is deadly to men if they were to eat its fruit plainly from the field or if they were to taste its juice. On our island of Hispaniola, the cows and mice eat yucca in even larger quantities than what we would eat. Although they destroy our estates, no harm is done to those animals, regardless of how much of the yucca they eat.

The sixth chapter of the twenty-first book of the second part is about the irreversible poison of an herb that the Carib Indians use along the coast of the Mainland. One of the most potent materials added to this herb is the juice of the chamomiles discussed in the twelfth chapter of the eighth book of this first part. However, as I write at length in the sixth chapter of the twenty-first book, the reader can see that chamomiles do not kill crabs, but the crabs that eat the chamomiles do kill the men who eat those crabs.