Laudator Temporis Acti

Pliny, Natural History 24.1.1 (tr. W.H.S. Jones):

Not even the woods and the wilder faces of Nature are without medicines, for there is no place where that holy Mother of all things did not distribute remedies for the healing of mankind, so that even the very desert was made a drug store...

Ne silvae quidem horridiorque naturae facies medicinis carent, sacra illa parente rerum omnium nusquam non remedia disponente homini, ut medicina fieret etiam solitudo ipsa...

Id., 24.1.4-5:

Hence sprang the art of medicine. Such things alone had Nature decreed should be our remedies, provided everywhere, easy to discover and costing nothing — the things in fact that support our life. Later on the deceit of men and cunning profiteering led to the invention of the quack laboratories, in which each customer is promised a new lease of his own life at a price. At once compound prescriptions and mysterious mixtures are glibly repeated, Arabia and India are judged to be storehouses of remedies, and a small sore is charged with the cost of a medicine from the Red Sea, although the genuine remedies form the daily dinner of even the poorest. But if remedies were to be sought in the kitchen-garden, or a plant or a shrub were to be procured thence, none of the arts would become cheaper than medicine. It is perfectly true that owing to their greatness the Roman people have lost their usages, and through conquering we have been conquered. We are the subjects of foreigners, and in one of the arts they have mastered even their masters.

Hinc nata medicina. haec sola naturae placuerat esse remedia, parata vulgo, inventu facilia ac sine inpendio e quibus vivimus. postea fraudes hominum et ingeniorum capturae officinas invenire istas, in quibus sua cuique homini venalis promittitur vita. statim compositiones et mixturae inexplicabiles decantantur, Arabia atque India remedia aestimantur, ulcerique parvo medicina a Rubro mari inputatur, cum remedia vera cotidie pauperrimus quisque cenet. nam si ex horto petantur aut herba vel frutex quaeratur, nulla artium vilior fiat. ita est profecto, magnitudine populi R. perdidit ritus, vincendoque victi sumus. paremus externis, et una artium imperatoribus quoque imperaverunt.