Natural History — Book XXVIII

Pliny the Younger & Pliny the Elder · a new plain-English translation from the Latin

1| We had described the natures of all the things that grow between sky and earth, and there remained those that are dug out of the earth itself, had not the treatment of the remedies from plants and shrubs drawn us aside to the animals themselves, since a greater medicine has been found in the very creatures that are healed. What then? Having described plants and the forms of flowers and many things rare and hard to find, shall we keep silent about what in man himself is good for man, and about the other kinds of remedies that live among us — especially when, unless one is free of pains and diseases, life itself becomes a punishment?

2| By no means; we shall spend every effort on it, though the danger of disgusting the reader presses hard, since we have resolved to have less regard for pleasing than for the usefulness of life. Indeed, we shall track down foreign practices too, and even barbarous rites. Let the question of credibility be referred to the authorities alone, although we ourselves have taken pains to choose these things by something close to a consensus of judgment, and have applied ourselves to careful selection rather than to quantity.

3| It is very necessary to point this out: we have already described the natures of animals and the discoveries each has made — for they have helped no less by discovering medicines than they help by supplying them — and now we are setting out the aids that are found in the animals themselves; not that these were wholly passed over there. So these are indeed different matters, but connected with those.

4| We shall begin, then, with man seeking his remedies from himself, and at once an immense difficulty confronts us. Sufferers from the epileptic [disease] even drink the blood of gladiators, as from living cups — though it is a horror to watch even wild beasts doing the same in that same arena. But, by Hercules, they think it most effective to suck from the man himself the blood, warm and breathing, and the very life itself from the kiss of the wounds, when it is not human custom to put one's mouth even to the wounds of wild beasts. Others seek out the marrow in the bones of the legs, and infants' brains.

5| And not a few among the Greeks have even described the flavours of the individual organs and limbs, pursuing everything down to the parings of the nails — as though health could be thought to consist in turning from a man into a wild beast, and in deserving disease in the very cure; a fine disappointment, by Hercules, if it does not help. To look upon human entrails is held a sin: what then of chewing them? Who invented these things, Osthanes?

6| For it is with you that I have to deal, overthrower of human law and craftsman of monstrosities, who first established them — I suppose so that life should not forget you. Who discovered how to chew the individual limbs of a man? Led on by what conjecture? What origin can that medicine have had? Who made poisonings more innocent than remedies? Granted that barbarians and foreigners had invented the rites: did the Greeks too make these arts their own?

7| There are treatises of Democritus stating that for one purpose the bones from the head of a criminal are more beneficial, for others those of a friend and guest. Apollonius wrote that it is most effective to scarify the gums when they ache with the tooth of a man killed by violence; Meletos, that cataracts of the eyes are healed with human gall; Artemon gave water from a spring, drunk at night from the skull of a man who had been killed and not cremated, for epilepsy. From the skull of a man who had died by hanging, Antaeus made pills against the bites of a mad dog.

8| And they have even healed quadrupeds with man, inserting human bones through holes bored in the horns of oxen against flatulence, and giving pigs for their diseases siligo that had lain overnight in a place where a man had been killed or cremated. Far from us and from our writings be such things! We shall speak of aids, not of abominations: where the use of the milk of women who have just given birth can heal, where saliva or the touch of the body can, and other such things.

9| We do not, for our part, think life so much to be desired that it must be dragged out by any means at all. Whoever you are, you will die just the same, even if you have lived foully or wickedly. Let each man therefore hold this first among the remedies of his mind: that of all the good things nature has given to man, none is better than a timely death, and that the best thing in it is that each man can provide it for himself.

10| Of the remedies drawn from man, the first raises a very great question, one that is always unsettled: whether words and the incantations of charms have any power. If they do, it would be fitting that the credit for it be given to man; but taken one by one, the belief of all the wisest men rejects it, while taken as a whole, life believes it at every hour without noticing. Indeed, it is thought that sacrificing victims without a prayer is of no avail, and that without one the gods are not properly consulted.

11| Moreover, there is one form of words for obtaining favourable omens, another for averting ill, another for commendation; and we see that the highest magistrates have made their supplications with fixed prayers, and that, so that no word may be skipped or spoken out of order, someone dictates them first from a written text, another again is assigned as a guard to watch, and yet another is appointed to order holy silence, while a piper plays so that nothing else may be heard. Both kinds of occurrence are notably on record: how often ill-omened cries breaking in have done harm, and how often the prayer has gone wrong; and then suddenly the head or the heart has vanished from the entrails, or been doubled, while the victim was standing.

12| There endures, in the mighty example of the Decii, father and son, the formula with which they devoted themselves; there survives the plea of the Vestal Tuccia when she was accused of unchastity, with whose aid she carried water in a sieve, in the 519th year of the City. Even our own age has seen a Greek man and a Greek woman buried alive in the Forum Boarium, or people of other nations with whom we were then at war. If anyone reads the prayer for this rite, which the master of the college of the Fifteen is accustomed to dictate first, he will surely acknowledge the power of charms, since the events of 830 years confirm it all.

13| We believe today that our Vestals, by a prayer, root runaway slaves to the spot, provided they have not yet left the City; and yet, if that principle is once accepted, that the gods hear any prayers or are moved by any words, the whole conjecture must be conceded. Our ancestors, at any rate, always believed such things, and the most difficult of them, that even thunderbolts can be called down, as we have shown in its proper place.

14| Lucius Piso, in the first book of his annals, is the authority that King Tullus Hostilius, trying from the books of Numa to call down Jupiter from heaven by the same sacrifice as Numa had used, was struck by lightning because he had done certain things not in the proper rite; and many indeed believe that the fates and portents of great affairs are altered by words.

15| When men digging the foundations in the shrine on the Tarpeian hill had found a human head, and envoys of Etruria had been sent to him on that account, the most celebrated seer, Olenus Calenus, seeing that it was a splendid and fortunate thing, tried to transfer it to his own nation by a question, having first marked out with his staff the outline of the temple on the ground before him: "Is this what you mean, Romans? Here will be the temple of Jupiter Best and Greatest, here we found the head?" The annals affirm most steadily that the fate would have passed over to Etruria, had not the envoys, forewarned by the seer's son, answered:

16| "We say the head was found not exactly here, but at Rome." They report that it happened a second time, when the clay four-horse chariot prepared for the pediment of the same shrine swelled in the kiln; and a second time, in a similar way, the omen was retained.

17| Let this suffice, so that it may be clear from examples that the powers of portents are even within our own control, and take effect according to how each has been received. In the discipline of the augurs, at any rate, it is agreed that neither curses nor any auspices concern those who, as they begin any matter, have declared that they do not observe them, than which gift of divine indulgence there is none greater. What? Are there not in the Twelve Tables themselves, in the words of the laws:

18| "whoever shall have charmed away crops," and elsewhere: "whoever shall have sung an evil charm"? Verrius Flaccus puts forward authorities whom he believes, that in sieges it was the custom of the Roman priests before all else to call out the god in whose protection that town stood, and to promise him the same or a greater worship among the Romans. And this rite endures in the discipline of the pontiffs, and it is agreed that for this reason the god in whose protection Rome stood was kept hidden, lest any of the enemy act in the same way.

19| There is no one who does not fear being bound fast by dire imprecations. To this belongs the rule that the shells of eggs, once anyone has sipped them out, and of snails, are at once broken or pierced with the same spoons. Hence Theocritus among the Greeks, Catullus among us, and most recently the imitation by Virgil of love incantations. Many believe the products of potteries are broken in this way, and not a few believe the same even of snakes, and that they themselves can chant back, and that this is the one thing they understand, and that they are drawn together by the song of the Marsi even in the quiet of night.

20| Already walls are inscribed with entreaties against fires. And it is not easy to say whether foreign and unutterable words destroy belief more powerfully, or Latin and unexpected ones, which the mind, always expecting something immense and worthy of moving a god, nay rather something to command the divine power, forces to seem ridiculous.

21| Homer said that Ulysses checked a flow of blood from a wounded thigh by a charm; Theophrastus, that sufferers from sciatica are cured; Cato handed down a charm to help dislocated limbs, Marcus Varro one for gout. They say the dictator Caesar, after one dangerous accident in a carriage, was always accustomed, as soon as he had sat down, to repeat a charm three times, which we know very many now do, to lay hold on safety on his journeys.

22| It pleases me to convict this part also by the conscience of individuals. For why do we on the first day of the beginning year wish one another good fortune with joyful prayers? Why at the public lustrations do we choose even auspicious names for those leading the victims? Why do we meet bewitchings with a peculiar adoration, some invoking the Greek Nemesis, whose statue for this reason is on the Capitol at Rome, although the name is not Latin?

23| Why at the mention of the dead do we call witness that their memory is not troubled by us? Why do we believe odd numbers more powerful for everything, and this is understood in the observation of days in fevers? Why at the first fruits of apples do we say that these are old, and wish for others new? Why do we greet those who sneeze, which they report even Tiberius Caesar, the gloomiest of men, as is agreed, insisted on in his carriage, and some think it more scrupulous also to greet by name?

24| Indeed, that absent persons sense in advance by a ringing of the ears conversations about themselves is an accepted belief. Attalus affirms that, if a scorpion is seen and one says "two," it is restrained and does not strike. And since the scorpion has reminded me: in Africa no one decides anything without first naming Africa, while among other nations they first call the gods to witness that they be willing. For if a table is present, we see that it is customary to put down a ring, since it is evident that even silent observances have power.

25| Another propitiates anxiety of mind by passing the finger with saliva behind the ear. When we show favour, we are even told by a proverb to press our thumbs. In adoring we bring the right hand to the lips and turn the whole body round, which the Gauls believe more scrupulous to do to the left. To adore lightning flashes with smacking of the lips is the consensus of nations.

26| Fires named during a banquet we ward off with water poured out beneath the table. When someone leaves a feast, to sweep the floor at the same time, or, while a guest is drinking, to have the table or sideboard removed, is judged most inauspicious. There is a discussion by Servius Sulpicius, a leading man, of why a table is not to be left; for at that time no more than the guests were being counted. For a dish or table to be called back by a sneeze, if something is not tasted afterwards, is counted among the evil omens [….] or altogether to be empty?

27| These practices were instituted by men who believed that the gods took part in every business and every hour, and who for that reason left them appeased even by our faults. Indeed it has also been noted when a banquet suddenly falls silent, but only when the number of those present is even, and this is a distress of rumour touching whichever of them it concerns. Food that slipped from the hand was in any case given back at the tables, and they forbade blowing on it for the sake of cleanliness; and auguries have been laid down from what one was saying or thinking when it happened; it is among the most accursed omens if it befalls a pontiff at a ceremonial feast. At any rate to put it back on the table and burn it to the Lar is an expiation.

28| Medicines, if they happen to have been set down on the table before being applied, they say do not help. To cut the nails on the Roman market days, in silence and starting from the index finger, is by the persuasion of many a matter of scruple; the hair, however, against falling out and pains of the head, on the 17th and 29th day of the moon. By a village law on very many estates of Italy it is provided that women walking along the roads must not twirl spindles, or carry them uncovered at all, since this is hostile to the hopes of all, above all of the crops.

29| Marcus Servilius Nonianus, a leading man of the state, not long ago, in fear of an eye inflammation, before he himself named it or anyone predicted it to him, used to fasten about his neck on a linen thread a paper inscribed with the two Greek letters PA; Mucianus, three times consul, used by the same observance a living fly in a white linen cloth, both declaring that they were themselves free of eye inflammation by these remedies. Charms certainly exist against hailstorms, against kinds of diseases and against burns, some even tried, but a great reluctance stands in the way of handing them down, in so great a variety of minds. Therefore about them let each think as he pleases.

30| The monstrous natures of men and their poisonous glances we have told of among the portents of nations, and many properties of animals, which it would be superfluous to repeat. The whole bodies of certain men are beneficial, as those of the families that are a terror to snakes: by touch alone, or by sucking, they relieve those who have been struck. To their kind belong the Psylli and the Marsi, and those called Ophiogenes in the island of Cyprus; of this family an envoy named Euagon, thrown by the consuls at Rome into a jar of snakes for the sake of a trial, gave a marvel, as the tongues licked about him.

31| The sign of that family, if it still endures, is a poisonous smell in the spring seasons. And their sweat also healed, not only their spittle. For those born on the island of Tentyra in the Nile are such a terror to crocodiles that the crocodiles flee even their voice. The inborn opposition of all these kinds is agreed to cure even by their presence, just as wounds are made worse by the entry of those who have ever been hurt by the tooth of a snake or a dog.

32| The same men spoil the broodings of hens and the offspring of cattle by miscarriage; so much poison remains from a harm once received that those who have suffered poisons become poisoners. The remedy is to wash their hands first and sprinkle with that water those whom you wish to cure. Again, those once struck by a scorpion are never afterwards stung by hornets, wasps or bees.

33| One will wonder less at this who knows that a garment that has been at a funeral is not touched by moths, and that snakes are hardly drawn out except with the left hand. From the discoveries of Pythagoras, which do not readily fail: an odd number of vowels in given names assigns lamenesses, loss of an eye and similar mishaps to the right side, an even number to the left. They say that difficult births are at once released when anyone has cast over the roof in which the pregnant woman lies a stone or missile belonging to those who have killed 3 creatures, each with a single blow: a man, a boar, a bear.

34| More credibly does a light-armed javelin do this, if it has been pulled out of a man's body and has not touched the ground; for brought in, it has the same effects. So too arrows drawn from a body, if they have not touched the ground, placed beneath those lying down, are a love charm, Orpheus and Archelaus write; and that the falling sickness is cured by food from the flesh of a wild beast killed with the same iron with which a man was slain. The parts of certain men are medicinal, as we said of the thumb of King Pyrrhus; and at Elis there used to be shown a bone of Pelops, and they asserted that the arm was ivory. (To shave moles on the face is still thought forbidden by many.)

35| But above all we have shown that fasting spittle is a protection against snakes, yet life recognizes other effective uses of it. We spit at epileptic fits, that is, we throw the contagion back. In a similar way we also beat back bewitchings and the encounter with a man lame in the right foot.

36| We also ask pardon from the gods for some bolder hope by spitting into the lap, and further, by the same reasoning, it is the custom in every kind of medicine to spit three times with a prayer and so assist the effects, and to mark beginning boils three times beforehand with fasting spittle. I say a wonder, but easy by experiment: if anyone regrets a blow dealt from a distance or at close quarters and spits at once into the middle of the hand with which he struck, the fault in the one struck is at once relieved. This is often proved in a lamed four-footed animal, the animal's gait being set right at once by such a remedy.

37| Some, however, make blows heavier before the attempt by throwing spittle into the hand in a similar way. Let us believe then that lichens and leprosies are warded off by the continual smearing of fasting spittle; likewise eye inflammations, by a daily morning smearing as it were; cancers, by a poultice of the earth-apple; pains of the neck, by fasting spittle carried with the right hand to the right hollow of the knee, with the left to the left; and if some creature has entered the ear and one spits in, it comes out.

38| Among amulets is to spit on one's own passed urine, likewise into the right foot's shoe before putting it on, likewise when one passes a place in which he has met some danger. Marcion of Smyrna, who wrote on simple remedies, reports that sea scolopendrae are burst by spittle, likewise toads and other frogs; Ofilius, snakes, if one spits into their gaping mouth; Salpe, that numbness is eased in whatever limb has gone to sleep, if one spits into the lap or touches the upper eyelids with saliva.

39| Why should we not believe that these things are rightly done: that at the approach of a stranger, or if an infant is looked at while asleep, the nurse spits three times into its mouth? Though indeed the fascinus also protects it with a religious force, the guardian not only of infants but of generals as well, a god who is worshipped among the Roman rites by the Vestals, and which, hanging beneath the chariots of those celebrating triumphs, defends them as a physician against envy, and a like medicine of the tongue bids the same men look back, so that Fortune, the executioner of glory, may be entreated from behind.

40| The bite of a man is counted among the harshest. Wax from the ears heals it, and, lest anyone wonder, also stings of scorpions and of snakes when applied at once, better when taken from the ears of the one struck. They report that hangnails are also healed in this way, and a snake's stroke by the powder of a crushed human tooth.

41| The hair of a boy that has first been cut off is said to relieve an attack of gout when tied around; and in general the hair of those not yet grown, and of men too, applied, heals bites of dogs with vinegar and wounds of the head with oil or wine; if we believe it, hair pulled from a cross is for quartans, and burnt hair certainly for cancer. The first tooth of a boy that has fallen, so long as it does not touch the earth, enclosed in a bracelet and constantly kept on the arm, prevents pains of the women's parts.

42| The big toe tied to the next toe quiets swellings of the groin; on the right hand the 2 middle fingers lightly bound with linen thread keep off catarrhs and eye inflammations. Further, a little stone passed out by someone with the stone, and tied above the pubes, is said to relieve others, and also pains of the liver, and to make childbirth quick; Granius adds that for this one extracted with iron is more effective. The male by whom a woman has conceived also speeds birth, if he loosens his girdle and girds the woman, then loosens it with a prayer added, that he has girded and will loosen, and goes away.

43| Orpheus and Archelaus report that quinsy is most effectively smeared with the patient's own blood, let from whatever part, likewise the faces of those fallen in the falling sickness, for they rise at once; some, if the thumbs of the feet are pricked and those drops are carried to the face, or if a virgin touches with the right thumb, judging by this conjecture that virgins' flesh should be eaten.

44| Aeschines of Athens cured quinsies and tonsils and uvulas and cancers with the ash of excrement. This medicine he called botryon. Many kinds of diseases are dissolved by the first intercourse and the first month of women, or, if this has not occurred, become long-lasting, above all the falling sickness. Further, they report that those struck by a snake or a scorpion are relieved by intercourse, but that women are harmed by that act. They say that faults of the eyes do not occur, and that those who touch their eyes three times with the water, when washing their feet, do not get inflamed eyes.

45| They affirm that by the hand of those snatched away by untimely death scrofulous swellings, swellings of the parotid glands and goitres are healed by touch, and some say by that of any dead person, at least of his own sex, with the left hand turned away. They also report that it is a remedy to bite off a piece of wood struck by lightning, with the hands held behind the back, and apply it to a tooth that aches. There are those who instruct that a tooth be fumigated with a tooth of a person of its own sex, and that the one called the canine be taken from an unburied body and tied on.

46| They report that earth from a skull is a depilatory for the eyelids, but that a herb, if any has been generated there, chewed makes teeth fall out, and that ulcers do not spread when circled with a human bone. Others mix waters from three wells in equal measure and pour a libation from a new earthen vessel, giving the rest to drink in tertians at the approach of the fevers. The same, in quartans, tie round the neck a piece of a nail taken from a cross, wrapped in wool, or a rope of esparto from a cross, and when the patient is freed they hide it in a hollow that the sun does not touch.

47| These are inventions of the Magi: that a whetstone on which iron tools have often been sharpened, placed unawares beneath the pillows of someone failing from poisoning, draws out a disclosure, so that he himself says what was given to him, and where, and at what time, though he does not name the culprit. A man struck by lightning, at any rate, turned toward the wound, is agreed to speak at once.

48| Some cure the groin by taking a thread from a web and tying it with nine or seven knots, naming at each some widow, and so binding it on the groin. They also order that a thread be worn, with a nail or anything else on which one has trodden tied on, so that the wound does not cause pain. Warts they remove from the twentieth day of the moon, lying on their backs on the boundary paths, looking at the moon itself with hands stretched beyond the head, and rubbing with whatever they have grasped.

49| A corn of the body, they say, if anyone scrapes it off when a star falls, is quickly healed; that with vinegar poured on the hinges of doors, mud smeared on the forehead quiets headache, and likewise the noose of a hanged man put around the temples. If a piece of fish has stuck in the throat, it falls out if the feet are lowered into cold water; if indeed of other bones, with little bones from the same vessel set on the head; if bread sticks, with bread from the same loaf put in each ear.

50| Indeed, the filth of man has also been made into great remedies by the gains of the Greek gymnasia, since those scrapings soften, warm, disperse and fill, the sweat and oil making the medicine. They are applied to inflamed and contracted wombs; so too they bring on the courses, soothe inflammations of the seat and condylomata, likewise pains of the sinews, dislocations, knots of the joints.

51| Scrapings from the baths are more effective for the same purposes, and for that reason they are mixed into suppurative medicines. For those which are made from the wax ointment mixed with mud only soften the joints, warm and disperse more effectively, but are less strong for the rest.

52| Beyond belief is the shameless care with which authorities cry out that the filth of the male member is a remedy, singular and most celebrated, against stings of scorpions; and again, in women, that what is produced from the bowels of infants, in the womb itself, is to be applied against sterility; they call it meconium. Indeed they have even scraped the walls of the gymnasia, and that filth too is said to have a heating force; it disperses boils, and is smeared on the ulcers of old men and boys and on scaly or burnt places. So much the less is it fitting to omit remedies that depend on the mind of man.

53| To abstain from all food or drink, at other times only from wine or meat, at other times from baths, as the state of health may demand, is counted among the most immediate remedies. To these are reckoned exercise, straining of the voice, anointing, rubbing with method; for vigorous rubbing thickens, gentle rubbing softens, much takes flesh away, moderate increases it.

54| Above all walking is beneficial, being carried and that in many ways, riding on horseback most useful for the stomach and hips, sailing for consumption, change of places for long diseases, likewise healing oneself by sleep or by the couch and by rare vomiting. Lying on the back suits the eyes, but on the face for coughs, on the sides against catarrhs. Aristotle and Fabianus report that most dreaming occurs around spring and autumn, and more when lying on the back, but none on the face; Theophrastus, that digestion is quicker when lying on the right side, harder from the back.

55| The sun also, greatest of remedies, can be provided by each man for himself, as can the vigour of linens and scrapers. To pour warm water over the head before the steaming of the baths and cold afterward is understood to be most healthful; likewise to take cold beforehand with food and to interpose it, and to precede sleep with a drink of it and, if one pleases, to interrupt it. It is to be noted that no other animal follows warm drinks, and for this reason they are not natural.

56| To rinse the mouth with unmixed wine before sleep on account of the breath, with cold water in the mornings, in an odd number, to guard against pains of the teeth, likewise the eyes with vinegar-water against inflammations, are sure experiments, just as, for the health of the whole body, is a varied diet that keeps no fixed rules. Hippocrates reports that the bowels of those who do not take a midday meal age sooner; but this he sang for remedies, not for feasts, since moderation in food is by far the most useful. Lucius Lucullus had given his slave this charge over himself, and as the last disgrace the hand of an old man who had celebrated a triumph was struck from food, even when feasting on the Capitol, the shameful thing being that he obeyed his slave more readily than himself.

57| Sneezes with a feather correct a heavy cold, and if anyone touches the nostrils of a mule with a kiss, as they report, sneezing and hiccup. For this Varro advises scratching the palm of one hand with the other in turn; most people move a ring from the left hand onto the right's longest finger, or plunge the hands into boiling water. Theophrastus says that old men sneeze with greater difficulty.

58| Democritus condemned sexual intercourse, as that in which one man leaps out of another man. And, by Hercules, rarity of it is more useful. Athletes, however, when sluggish, are restored by intercourse, and the voice is recalled when it declines from clear to dark. It also cures pain of the loins, dullness of the eyes, the mad and the melancholic.

59| To sit beside women who are pregnant, or when remedies are applied to anyone, with the fingers interlaced like a comb, is sorcery, and they report this was discovered when Alcmena was giving birth to Hercules; it is worse if around one or both knees; likewise to lay the hams of one leg on the other knee. Therefore our forebears forbade these things in the councils of generals or magistrates, as impeding every action, and forbade likewise to be present at sacrifices or vows in a similar posture;

60| and that heads be uncovered at the sight of magistrates they ordered not for the sake of veneration but, as Varro is the authority, for the sake of health, since the heads were made firmer by the custom. When something has fallen into the eye, it helps to press the other; with water in the right little ear, to hop on the left foot with the head tilted toward the right shoulder, and in turn from the opposite ear; if spittle excites cough, to be breathed on the forehead by another; if the uvula is slack, to have the crown of the head lifted by another's bite; in pain of the neck, to rub the hams, or the neck against the hams;

61| to set the feet on the ground, if the sinews are drawn in them or in the legs in bed, or, if this occurs on the left side, to grasp the thumb of the left sole with the right hand, and likewise the reverse; to bind the extremities of the body with fleeces against shudderings or excessive bleeding of the nose, [….] with linen or papyrus the beginnings of the genitals, the middle of the thigh to hold back flows of urine; in looseness of the stomach, to press the feet or to dip the hands into boiling water.

62| Further, to spare speech also is healthful for many reasons. We have received that for three years Maecenas Melissus imposed silence on himself, after blood was brought up from a rupture. For those thrown down, and those climbing, and those lying, if some danger threatens, and against blows, to hold the breath is of singular protection, which we have shown was discovered by an animal.

63| To drive an iron nail in the place where the head first struck, in one who falls down in the falling sickness, is said to be a release from that evil. Against torment of the kidneys or loins or bladder, to pass urine bent forward in the tubs of the baths is held to be a mitigation. To bind wounds with the knot of Hercules is wonderfully quicker as a remedy,

64| And even the everyday girdle, tied with such a knot, is said to have a certain useful force, since Demetrius, in a volume he composed, has declared the number four also to be Herculean, and explained why four cyathi or four sextarii should not be drunk at a time. Against eye inflammations it helps to rub behind the ears, and for watering eyes the forehead. An omen from the man himself of not fearing death in sickness is this: as long as the pupils of the eyes give back an image.

65| Great account, and not only account but scruple, is found among authors concerning urine, divided into kinds, even that of eunuchs for sorceries of fertility. But of those things which it is right to relate: that of boys before puberty against the spittle of asps, which they call ptyades, because they spit poisons into the eyes of men; against whites of the eyes, dimnesses, scars, the argema, the eyelids, and with meal of bitter vetch against burns; against the pus of the ears and little worms, if it is boiled down to half with a headed leek in a new earthen vessel. Steaming with it also brings on the courses of women.

66| Salpe bathes the eyes with it with [….] for firmness, and smears it on sunburn with the white of an egg (more effectively, an ostrich's), for two hours at a time. With this, stains of ink are also washed away. That of a man cures gout, the evidence being the fullers, who for that reason are said not to be attacked by that disease. Old urine is mixed with the ash of oysters against eruptions on the body of infants and all running ulcers. It is smeared on eaten-away places, burns, faults of the seat, cracks of the skin and stings of scorpions.

67| The renown of midwives has declared that itchings of the body are cured more effectively by no other juice, with natron added, ulcers of the head, scurf, nomae, especially of the genitals. One's own urine, so far as it is right to say, helps each person most: when poured over at once a dog's bite, and the spines of sea urchins that stick in, and applied on a sponge or wool; or against the bites of a mad dog, with the ash of it kneaded in; and against the strokes of snakes. For against scolopendrae it is reported to be wonderful that, the crown of the head touched with a drop of one's own urine, those hurt are freed at once.

68| Omens of health are given from it: if in the morning it is clear, then reddish; in the former way it is signified that digestion is going on, in the latter that it has been completed. Red kinds are bad signs, black worst, bubbling bad. Thick urine, in which what settles is white, signifies that pain threatens about the joints or the viscera; the same when green, a disease of the viscera; pale, of bile; reddish, of blood. Bad also is that in which something like bran and little clouds appear.

69| Diluted white urine too is faulty, and deadly is the thick with a heavy smell, and in boys the thin and diluted. The Magi forbid, because of it, being naked against the sun and moon, or that anyone's shadow be sprinkled by it. Hesiod advises that it be passed beside something that stands in the way, lest nakedness offend some god. Osthanes promised that each person's own urine, dropped on the foot in the morning, is an aid against all evil drugs.

70| What is reported from the bodies of women adds to the miracles of portents, to say nothing of the crimes of abortion broken up limb by limb, the expiations of the courses, and the other things which not only midwives but even the prostitutes themselves have disclosed: that if hair is burnt, snakes are put to flight by the smell; that by the same odour women strangled by disease of the womb breathe again;

71| that with its ash, if burnt in a potsherd or with the froth of silver, roughness and itchings of the eyes are corrected, likewise warts and ulcers of infants; with honey, wounds of the head also and the hollows of all ulcers; with honey and frankincense added, boils; gout; with swine's fat, the sacred fire; blood is stopped when it is smeared on; likewise creeping sensations of the body.

72| About the use of milk it is agreed that it is the sweetest and softest, and most useful in a long fever and for coeliac complaints, most of all that of a woman who has already weaned her infant. Also in softness of the stomach, in fevers, in gnawing pains they find it most effective; likewise for collections in the breasts with frankincense, and for an eye with blood suffused by a blow and in pain or in a flux, if it is milked into it, it helps greatly, more so with honey and juice of narcissus or the fine powder of frankincense, and above all, in every use, that of a woman who has borne a male is more effective, and by far the most effective that of one who has borne twin males, and if she herself abstains from wine and sharper foods.

73| Moreover, mixed with the liquid white of eggs and applied to the forehead on wool soaked in it, it checks flowings of the eyes. Even if a frog has sprinkled an eye with its spittle, it is a special remedy, and it is drunk and dropped in against its bite. They affirm that a person anointed with the milk of a mother and her daughter together is freed from every fear for the eyes for the whole of life. It also cures faults of the ears, with oil mixed in moderately, or warmed with goose fat if they pain from a blow. If the smell is rather heavy, as often happens in long-standing faults, it is shut in on wool with diluted honey.

74| And against jaundice left in the eyes it is dropped in with elaterium. It is especially strong when drunk against poisons given from the sea hare, buprestis, or even, as Aristotle reports, dorycnium, and against madness caused by a drink of hyoscyamus. They also order it smeared on for gout, with hemlock, others with oesypum and goose fat, in which manner it is also applied for pains of the womb. It even stops the belly when drunk, as Rabirius writes, and brings on the courses. But that of a woman

75| who has borne a girl is strong only for healing faults in the face. The ailments of the lungs are also cured by woman's milk; if to it are mixed the urine of a boy before puberty and Attic honey, all in the measure of a spoonful of each, I find that worms of the ears are also driven out. They say that dogs do not go mad after tasting milk from a woman who has borne a male.

76| The fasting spittle of a woman also they judge powerful for bloodshot eyes and against fluxes, if the corners of the eyes, when they are inflamed, are moistened with it again and again, more effectively if she has abstained the day before from food and wine. I find also that pains are lessened by tying the head with a woman's band.

77| After this there is no limit. First, that hailstorms and whirlwinds are driven off, and against lightning itself, when the woman's monthly flow is bared; thus the violence of the sky is turned aside, and in sailing storms indeed even without the menses. But concerning the menses themselves, which at other times are portentous, as we have indicated in its place, they prophesy dire and unspeakable things, of which it is no shame to have spoken: that if that force coincides with eclipses of the moon or sun it becomes beyond remedy, no less at the silent moon, and that intercourse is then deadly and pestilential to males,

78| and that purple cloth too is polluted by them at that time; so much greater is the force. But in any other flow, if women go around a cornfield naked, caterpillars and little worms and beetles and other noxious creatures fall off, Metrodorus of Scepsis reports it was discovered in Cappadocia on account of the multitude of cantharides; so they go through the midst of the fields, their garments lifted over the buttocks. Elsewhere it is observed that they go with bare feet, with hair and girdle loosened. They must take care not to do it at sunrise, for the seedlings then dry up, and new growths are injured for ever by the touch, and rue and ivy, the most medicinal of things, die at once.

79| We have said much about this violence, but besides those things it is certain that bees flee when their hives are touched; that linens turn black when they are boiled; that the edge of razors is blunted; that bronze takes on a heavy poisonous smell on contact, and verdigris, more if it happens while the moon is waning; that mares, if pregnant, suffer miscarriage when touched, and indeed by sight alone, however far off they are seen, if that purging is the first after virginity or continues in a virgin of its own accord at the proper age.

80| We have shown that bitumen, which is produced in Judaea, is overcome by this force alone, by the thread of a garment that has touched it. It is not conquered even by fire, which conquers everything, and even that ash, if anyone sprinkles it on clothes to be washed, changes purple, takes the bloom from colours, and not even the women themselves are immune from it among themselves, to their own harm: it causes abortion by smearing, or if a pregnant woman simply steps over it.

81| What Lais and Elephantis have handed down, contradicting each other, about an abortive charcoal from the root of cabbage or myrtle or tamarisk quenched in that blood, and likewise that she-asses do not conceive for as many years as the grains of barley they have eaten that were touched, and whatever else they have announced that is monstrous or at war with itself, since the same writers declared that fertility is made by the same means as they declared sterility, it is better not to believe.

82| Bithus of Dyrrhachium reports that mirrors dulled by the glance recover their brightness if the same women look at them again turned away, and that all such force is dissolved if they have a mullet fish with them; many indeed hold that there are even remedies in so great an evil: that gout is smeared with it, scrofulous swellings and swellings of the parotid and boils, sacred fires, furuncles and fluxes of the eyes are eased by the handling of those women; Lais and Salpe, the bites of mad dogs and tertian and quartan fevers, with menstrual blood in black ram's wool enclosed in a silver armlet,

83| Diotimus of Thebes, or even a small piece of a garment so stained, or a thread inserted into the armlet. Sotira, a midwife, said it is most effective for tertians and quartans to smear under the soles of the sick person, and much more effective by the woman herself and unknown to the patient; that so also epileptics are roused. The physician Icatidas promised that quartans are ended by intercourse, at least when the menses are beginning.

84| But among all it is agreed that if water and drink are dreaded because of the bite of a dog, merely a piece of such a cloth placed under the cup at once dispels that fear, evidently by the prevailing of that sympathy of the Greeks, since we have said that the madness of dogs begins from tasting this blood. It is certain that with that ash all ulcers of beasts of burden are healed, with the powder of furnaces and wax added, and that stains from a garment are washed out by nothing but the urine of the same woman,

85| that the ash alone, mixed with oil of roses, quiets above all women's pains of the head when smeared on the forehead, and that the harshest force of that flow is by itself in the years after virginity has been loosed. This too is agreed, than which nothing would I more gladly believe, that when the doorposts are touched at all with the menstrual blood, the arts of the Magi are made void, a race of the emptiest sort, as can be judged.

86| For I will set down even the most modest of their promises, namely that from a man the parings of the nails of feet and hands, mixed with wax in such a way that it is said a remedy is being sought for a tertian, quartan or daily fever, they order to be fastened before sunrise to someone else's door as remedies in these diseases, with how great folly, if it is false, how great harm, if they transfer the diseases! More harmless of these, they order the parings of the nails of all the fingers to be thrown to the holes of the ants, and the ant that first begins to drag one away to be seized and tied around the neck; so the disease is dispelled.

87| These are things which it may be right to have related, and most of them are not to be spoken except with a pardon asked; the rest are unspeakable, unutterable, so that my discourse hastens to flee from man. In the remaining matters we shall follow the famous animals or their works. The blood of the elephant, above all of the male, checks all flowings, which they call rheumatisms.

88| With shavings of ivory and Attic honey, as they say, films on the face are removed; with sawdust of it, whitlows. By the touch of the trunk, headache is relieved, more effectively if it also sneezes. The right part of the trunk, tied on with Lemnian red earth, rouses the impulses of desire. The blood is beneficial also to those in wasting decline, and the liver for the falling sicknesses.

89| The fat of a lion with oil of roses guards the skin of the face from blemishes and gives it whiteness; it also heals parts burnt by snow, and swellings of the joints. The emptiness of the Magi promises, for those anointed with that fat, more ready favour among peoples or kings, above all with that fat which lies between the eyebrows, where none can be.

90| Similar things are promised of the tooth, especially from the right side, and of the hairs from the lower muzzle. The gall, with water added, gives brightness to eyes anointed with it, and with the fat of the same it disperses the falling sicknesses, by a light taste, so that those who have taken it at once work it off by running. The heart taken as food cures quartans; the fat with oil of roses, daily fevers. Wild beasts flee those anointed with it; it seems also to resist ambushes.

91| The brain of a camel, dried and drunk in vinegar, they say cures falling sicknesses; likewise the gall drunk with honey, this also for quinsy; that the tail, dried, loosens the belly; that the ash of the dung makes hair curl, with oil. And the ash smeared on and drunk, as much as is taken with 3 fingers, helps those with dysentery, and also falling sicknesses. They report that the urine is most useful to fullers, and for running ulcers likewise; the barbarians keep it for five years, and in measures of a hemina, drunk, it moves the belly; that bristles from the tail, twisted and tied on the left arm, cure quartans.

92| The hyena the Magi have placed in greatest admiration of all animals, inasmuch as they have attributed to it magical arts and a force by which it draws men to itself, alienating their minds. The changes of sex in a yearly turn, and the other monstrous things of its nature, we have told; now we shall go through whatever is reported in medicines.

93| It is reported to be a special terror to panthers, so that they do not even attempt to resist, and that one who has something from its hide is not attacked, and, wonderful to say, if the pelts of both, opposed, are hung up, the hairs of the panther fall off. When hyenas flee the hunter, they turn to the right, so as to get onto the footprints of the man who has gone ahead; if this succeeds, the man's mind is deranged and the man even falls from his horse; but if it veers to the left, it is a proof of failing and of a quick capture, and it is caught more easily if the hunter has tied his girdles and the whip that urges his horse with seven knots each.

94| Next, as the vanity of the Magi is skilful in roundabout ways, they order it to be caught when the moon is passing the sign of the Twins, and almost every single hair to be kept; that the skin which was on its head, tied on, is beneficial for headache; for eye inflammation the gall smeared on the forehead, or, so that there be no inflammation at all, boiled down with 3 cyathi of Attic honey and an ounce of saffron and used as an ointment; so films and cataracts are also dispersed;

95| that brightness is aroused better by an aged preparation, which is kept in a Cyprian box; that with the same the argema is healed, roughnesses, excrescences in the eyes, likewise scars, and glaucomata, when the eyes are anointed with the juice of a fresh roasted liver and honey skimmed of its froth. Its teeth help toothache by touch, or tied on in numerical order, and pains of shoulders and arms; the teeth of the same, but from the left part of the muzzle, tied on with the skin of a sheep or goat, torments of the stomach;

96| the lungs taken as food, for coeliac complaints, or the ash of the stomach smeared on with oil; for sinews, the marrow from the back with old oil and gall; for quartan fevers, the liver tasted three times before the onsets; for gout, the ash of the spine with the tongue and the right foot of a seal, with bull's gall added, all cooked together and smeared on with hyena skin; in the same disease the gall also helps with Assian stone;

97| for the tremulous, spasmodic, those who start up, and those whose heart palpitates, some of the heart cooked, to be chewed, in such a way that the ash of the rest is smeared on with the hyena's brain; hairs also are removed by this compound smeared on, or by the gall by itself, once the hairs have been pulled out where it is not wished that they grow again; so also useless ones are taken off the eyelids; for pains of the loins, flesh from the loins to be eaten and smeared on with oil; sterility of women is corrected by the eye taken in food with liquorice and dill, conception being promised within three days.

98| Against night terrors and the fright of shades, one of the large teeth tied on with linen thread is told to help. They direct that madmen be fumigated with the same, and have it tied before their chest together with kidney fat or the liver or the hide. For a woman, white flesh from the hyena's breast and seven hairs and a stag's genitals, if tied on, hung from the neck in the skin of a roe,

99| are promised to keep her from miscarrying; that the genitals, taken in honey, each by its corresponding sex, stir desire, even if men hate intercourse with women; indeed that the harmony of a whole house stands, with the same genitals and a joint of the spine with the hide adhering preserved. Hence they skilfully call the joint of the spine the Atlantian knot; and it is the first. They also hold it among remedies for the falling sicknesses. They say serpents are put to flight when the fat is set alight;

100| that the jaw, crushed in anise and taken in food, quiets shudderings; that with the same fumigation the courses of women are brought on. And so great is the vanity that they deny that if the upper tooth of the right side of the muzzle is tied on the arm, the throws of javelin-casters will go astray. By the palate of the same, dried and warmed with Egyptian alum and changed three times in the mouth, foul smells and ulcers of the mouth are corrected; and that those who have the tongue in their shoe beneath the foot are not barked at by dogs;

101| that with the left part of the brain smeared on the nostrils, deadly diseases are mitigated, whether of men or of four-footed animals; that the skin of the forehead resists bewitchings; that the flesh of the neck, whether chewed or dried and drunk, is for pains of the loins; that pains of the sinews are to be fumigated with sinews from the back and shoulders; that hairs of the muzzle brought to women's lips are a love charm; that the liver, given in a drink, cures gripings and stones.

102| For the heart, taken in food or drink, helps all pains of the body; the spleen, spleens; the caul, with oil, inflammations of ulcers; the marrow, pains of the spine and weariness of the sinews; the sinews of the kidneys, drunk in wine with frankincense, restore fertility taken away by sorcery; the womb, given in a drink together with the rind of a sweet pomegranate, helps the womb of women; with the fat from the loins women who give birth with difficulty are fumigated and give birth at once; marrow from the back tied on helps against empty apparitions;

103| the male genitals by fumigation, for the spasmodic, likewise for those with inflamed eyes, ruptures, and against inflammations the opposite feet by touch, left feet on the right parts, right on the left; the left foot carried over a woman in labour is deadly, with the right carried in she delivers easily. The membrane that has held the gall, drunk in wine or taken in food, helps those with heart disease against [….]; the bladder drunk in wine, against incontinence of urine; and the urine found in the bladder,

104| drawn with oil and sesame and honey added, helps an old sharpness of the stomach. The first and eighth of the ribs, by fumigation, are salutary to those with ruptures; from the spine, bones for women in labour; the blood taken with barley meal, for gripings; with the same, the doorposts touched, wherever the arts of the Magi are plied, the gods are not drawn out and do not converse, whether it be tried with lamps or a basin or water or a ball or any other kind; the flesh, if eaten, is effective against the bites of a rabid dog, and the liver still more so.

105| The flesh or bones of a man which are found in the stomach of a hyena that has been killed help the gouty by fumigation; if nails are found in it, it signifies the death of one of those who caught it; excrement or bones passed up when it is killed are strong against magical ambushes; the dung found in its intestines, dried, is effective for dysentery, and drunk and smeared on with goose fat over the whole body it helps those hurt by an evil drug; for those bitten by a dog, the fat smeared on and the hide spread under them;

106| again, the ash of the left ankle bone boiled down with the blood of a weasel makes those anointed with it hated by all; the same is done by the eye, boiled down. Above all is this, that they point out the end of the pipe of the intestine against the injustices of leaders and men of power, and for success of petitions and the outcomes of trials and lawsuits, if one [only] has it with him at all; and the cavity of the same, tied on the left upper arm, if one looks at a woman, is a love charm so immediate that she follows at once; the ash of the hairs of the same place, smeared on with oil on men who are disgracefully soft, makes them take on severe, not merely chaste, manners.

107| Next is the fabulous crocodile, in nature also that one whose life is shared between water and land. For there are two kinds of them. Teeth from the right jaw of that one, tied on the right upper arm, stir desire, if we believe it; the canine teeth keep off regular fevers when filled with frankincense, for they are hollow, in such a way that for 5 days the one who has tied them on is not seen by the sick man. They report that little stones taken from its belly are strong against the shudderings of approaching fevers.

108| For the same reason the Egyptians anoint their sick with the fat. The other, like it, much smaller in size, lives only on land and among the most fragrant flowers; for that reason its intestines, filled with a pleasant smell, are carefully sought; they call it crocodilea, most useful for faults of the eyes, for those anointed with leek juice, and against cataracts or dimness.

109| Smeared on with cyprine oil, it also removes troubles arising on the face, and with water all diseases whose nature creeps over the face, and it restores brightness; it removes freckles and pimples and all blemishes. And against the falling sicknesses it is drunk in vinegar and honey, two obols at a time. Applied, it brings on the courses. The best is the whitest, and brittle, and least heavy, which when rubbed between the fingers ferments. It is washed like white lead.

110| They adulterate it with starch or Cimolian earth, but most of all with the dung of starlings which are caught and fed on rice only. For eyes anointed with the gall in honey, against cataracts, they declare nothing more useful. With the intestines and the rest of its body they say it is salutary to fumigate those suffering in the womb, likewise to wrap them round in fleeces soaked in the vapour of the same. The ash of the hide of either, smeared in vinegar on those parts that need cutting, or the smell of it burning, takes away all sensation of the scalpel.

111| The blood of either, to those anointed, rouses clearness of sight and corrects scars of the eyes. The body itself, except the head and feet, boiled, is eaten for sciatica and cures an old cough, above all in boys, and likewise pains of the loins. They also have a fat, by the touch of which hair falls off. This protects those anointed with it from crocodiles, and is dropped into bites. The heart, attached in the wool of a black sheep to which no other colour has run, and which was born of its mother's first lambing, is said to drive away quartans.

112| We shall join to these animals very like them and equally foreign, and first the chameleon, thought worthy by Democritus of a special volume and cursed limb by limb, the lies of Greek vanity being learned and set down not without great pleasure on our part. It is like the above-mentioned crocodile also in size, differing only by the sharper curve of the spine and the breadth of the tail.

113| No animal is thought more timid, and for that reason it has a changing of many colours. Its greatest force is against the kind of hawks. For it is reported to draw down to itself one flying over and to offer itself willingly to be torn by the other animals. Its head and throat, if burnt with oaken wood, make a gathering of rains and thunder, Democritus relates; likewise the liver burnt on tiles.

114| The rest that he says relating to sorceries, though we think it false, we shall omit, except where they will convict him by ridicule: that with the right eye, if it is torn out of the living animal, the whites of the eyes are removed, with goat's milk; that the tongue, tied on, averts the dangers of childbed; that the same animal is salutary to women in labour if it is in the house, but if it is brought in, most destructive. The tongue, if taken from the living animal, is strong for the outcomes of trials, the heart tied on in black wool of the first shearing against quartans.

115| That the right forefoot, bound to the left arm with a hyena's skin, is strong against robbers and night terrors, and likewise the right teat against frights and panics; that the left foot is roasted in an oven with a herb that is also called chameleon, and with ointment added these lozenges, stored in a wooden vessel, bring it about, if we believe it, that the one who has them is not seen by others.

116| That the right shoulder avails to conquer opponents or enemies, at any rate if the man has trodden on the sinews of the same cast away; the left, with what monstrous rites they consecrate it, and in what way dreams are sent, such as you wish and to whom you wish, I am ashamed to relate: all those things are undone by the right foot, as the lethargies that the right side has made are by the left side. But headaches are cured with wine sprinkled in which either side has been soaked; if swine's milk is mixed with the ash of a left thigh or foot, gouty persons are made so by smearing the feet.

117| With the gall cataracts and films are believed almost to be corrected by anointing for three days, snakes to be put to flight by it dropped on fires, weasels to be drawn together when it is thrown into water, and hairs to be pulled off when it is smeared on the body. He relates that the liver does the same smeared on with the lung of the bramble frog; moreover, that love charms are dissolved by the liver, and the melancholic cured if the juice of the herb Helenia is drunk from the hide of a chameleon; that the intestines and the stuffing of them, though that animal lives on no food, smeared on together with the urine of apes at the door of enemies, win for them the hatred of all men;

118| that by the tail rivers and rushes of waters are checked, snakes are put to sleep; that the same, treated with cedar and myrrh and bound to a double branch of palm, strikes the water and disperses it, so that all that lies within appears; and would that Democritus had been touched by that branch, since he promised that immoderate talkativeness is restrained in that way. And it is plain that a man in other ways shrewd and most useful to life slipped through too great a zeal for helping mortals.

119| Of the same likeness is the scincus, and some have said it is a land crocodile, though whiter and with a thinner skin. Its chief difference from the crocodile is recognized in the row of scales turned from tail to head. The largest is the Indian, then the Arabian. They are brought in salt. The snout and feet, drunk in white wine, kindle desires of love, particularly when satyrion and seed of rocket, one drachma each of all, and 2 of pepper, are mixed in, and lozenges of a drachma each are drunk.

120| By itself, the flesh of the flanks, two obols with myrrh and pepper in like manner, drunk, is believed more effective for the same. It helps also against the poisons of arrows, as Apelles reports, taken before and after. It is added also to famous antidotes. Sextius reports that more than a drachma's weight drunk in a hemina of wine brings destruction, and besides that the broth of the same boiled with honey, taken, checks desire.

121| The crocodile has a certain kinship with the hippopotamus, which shares its river and its twofold way of life; this animal is the discoverer, as we have said, of letting blood, and is most plentiful above the Saitic prefecture. The ash of its hide, smeared on with water, heals boils; the fat, cold fevers, likewise the dung by fumigation; the teeth from the left side, toothache, the gums being scarified. Its skin from the left part of the forehead, tied to the groin, checks desire; the ash of the same fills out bald places. A drachma of the testicle is drunk in water against snakes. Painters use the blood.

122| Foreign too are lynxes, which see most clearly of all four-footed animals. They report that all their claws with the hide are burnt most effectively on the island of Carpathus. With this ash drunk the shameful acts of men are checked, with the sprinkling of it the lusts of women, likewise itchings of the body; the urine, the dripping of the bladder. Therefore it is reported that the lynx buries it at once with earth heaped up by its feet. The same is also shown as a remedy for pain of the throat. So far, foreign animals.

123| Now we shall turn to our own world, and first we shall tell the remedies common to animals and the outstanding ones, as from the use of milk. Most useful to each is the mother's. For nurses to conceive is ruinous; for these are the infants who are called colostrati, the milk thickened to the likeness of cheese. Colostra is the first spongy thickening of milk after birth. Whatever is human nourishes most, then goat's, whence perhaps the fables said Jupiter was so nourished. Sweetest after man's is camel's, most effective that of asses. That of large animals and bodies is more easily given back.

124| Most suited to the stomach is goat's, since goats feed on foliage rather than grass; cow's is more medicinal, sheep's sweeter and more nourishing, less useful to the stomach, since it is fatter. All spring milk is more watery than summer's, and that from young animals. Best proved is that which clings to the nail and does not run off; boiled it is less harmful, above all with sea pebbles. The belly is loosened most by cow's milk, and any boiled milk inflates less.

125| The use of milk is for all internal ulcerations, most of all the kidneys, bladder, bowels, throat, lungs; externally, for itching of the skin, eruptions of phlegm, drunk after abstinence; for as in Arcadia consumptive people, those wasting away, and the ill-conditioned drank cow's milk, we have told in the account of herbs. Among examples are those who by drinking ass's milk have been freed from gout in the foot and the hand.

126| The physicians have added one kind to the kinds of milk, which they have called schiston. It is made in this way: it is boiled in a new earthen vessel, goat's milk above all, and stirred with fresh fig branches, with as many cyathi of honeyed wine added as there are heminae of milk. When it boils, to keep it from flowing over a silver cyathus lowered with cold water does the work, provided it pours nothing in. Then, taken off the fire, it is separated by cooling, and the whey parts from the milk.

127| Some boil down the whey itself, now by far the most potent, to a third and cool it in the open air. It is drunk most effectively in heminae at intervals, five a day being enough; it is better to be carried about after the drink. It is given to epileptics, the melancholic, paralytics, in leprosies, elephantiasis, diseases of the joints.

128| Milk is also poured in against gnawings caused by drugs, and, if dysentery burns, boiled with sea pebbles or with barley gruel. Likewise for gnawings of the intestines cow's or sheep's is more useful. Fresh milk is also poured in for those with dysentery, and unboiled for the colon, likewise for the womb, and for the stings of snakes, or after drinking pine caterpillars, buprestis, the poisons of cantharides or of the salamander,

129| cow's in particular for those who have drunk colchicum or hemlock or dorycnium or the sea hare, as ass's against gypsum and white lead and sulphur and quicksilver, also for a hard belly in fever. It is also used as a gargle for ulcerated throats. It is drunk most usefully by those regaining strength after weakness, whom they call atrophi, also in a fever free of headache. The ancients kept it among their secrets that boys should be given a hemina of ass's milk before food, or if they felt gnawings when passing their food, and goat's if ass's was not to be had.

130| The whey of cow's milk helps those who cannot breathe unless upright, above all else with cress added. The eyes are also anointed, in inflammation, with milk, 4 drachmas of pounded sesame being added to each hemina. With goat's milk spleens are cured, after two days' fasting, on the third day, the goats having been fed on ivy, taken for three days with no other food. The use of milk is otherwise harmful to headaches, the liver, spleen, fault of the sinews, those with fevers, dizziness except for the sake of purging, heavy colds, coughers, and the bleary-eyed. Sheep's is most useful for tenesmus, dysentery; and there have been those who said that this and woman's is most healthful for the consumptive.

131| Of the kinds of cheese we have spoken, when we spoke of the udders and the several parts of animals. Sextius reports the same effects for mare's as for cow's; this they call hippace. Useful to the stomach are those that are not salted, that is, fresh. Old ones stop the belly and reduce the body, more useless for the stomach; and on the whole salted ones reduce the body, soft ones nourish.

132| Fresh cheese with honey corrects bruises; soft cheese stops the belly and quiets gripings, in lozenges boiled in harsh wine and again toasted in a pan with honey. They call saprum that which, pounded with salt and dried service-berries in wine and drunk, heals coeliac complaints. Goat's cheese pounded and applied for carbuncles of the genitals; likewise sour cheese with oxymel, smeared on blemishes in the bath, is spread over with oil.

133| From milk butter is also made, the most refined food of barbarous nations, which sets the rich apart from the common people. Most is made from cow's milk, and hence the name; the fattest is made from sheep's and goat's, but in winter the milk is warmed, in summer only pressed out, by frequent shaking in long vessels that take in air through a narrow hole, and otherwise tied shut at the very mouth. A little water is added, so that it turns sour. What is most curdled floats on top;

134| this, taken out and salt added, they call oxygala. The rest they boil in pots; there what floats on top is butter, oily by nature. The more it tastes of its rank flavour, the better it is judged. Aged, it is mixed into many compounds. Its nature is to contract, soften, fill, purge.

135| Oxygala is made also in another way, sour milk being added to fresh that they wish to turn, very useful for the stomach. We shall tell the effects in their places. The next praise among common things is for fat, but most of all swine's, even more scrupulously among the ancients. At least brides entering even now keep it a rite to touch the doorposts with it. It is aged in two ways, with salt or pure; so much the more useful it becomes.

136| Axungia the Greeks also named, already in their own volumes. Nor is the cause of its powers hidden, since that animal feeds on the roots of herbs; so even its dung has countless uses. For which reason we shall speak of no other [sue]. Much more effective is that from a female which has not farrowed, but much better in wild boars it is said to be. The use of axungia is for softening, warming, dispersing and purging.

137| Some of the physicians, with goose fat and bull's tallow and oesypum mixed in, order it to be used for gout; if the pain persists, with wax, myrtle, resin, pitch. Pure axungia heals burns, even by snow, and chilblains, with the ash of barley and gall nut in equal measure. It helps also limbs that are rubbed, and relieves weariness and fatigue of journeys. For an old cough fresh is boiled down in the weight of a quadrans in 3 cyathi of wine, honey added.

138| Old also, taken in pills, it cures consumption, that which has been aged without salt. For on the whole salted is not admitted except for things that need purging or that are not ulcerated. Some boil quadrantes of axungia and honeyed wine in three cyathi of wine each, against consumption, and order liquid pitch in an egg to be taken every fourth day. It is also bound about the sides, chest and shoulder blades of those who feel consumption, and so great is the force that, tied on even the knees, the taste returns into the mouth, and they seem to spit it out.

139| The fat of a sow that has not farrowed is used most fittingly, by women for the skin; against scab anyone uses it with the tallow of beasts of burden mixed in as a third part and pitch, boiled up together. Pure, it sustains pregnancies inclining toward miscarriage, inserted in the manner of a suppository. It makes scars the colour of the surrounding skin, with white lead mixed in or silver froth, but with sulphur it corrects roughness of the nails. It also cures falling hair and ulcers on the heads of women, with a fourth part of gall nut, and, smoked, for the eyelashes. It is also given to the consumptive by the ounce, boiled down with a hemina of old wine until 3 ounces remain of the whole; some add a little honey.

140| It is smeared on boils with lime, likewise on furuncles and hardness of the breasts. It cures ruptures, convulsions, spasms, dislocations, corns and cracks and faults of callus, with white hellebore; parotid swellings, with meal of a salt-fish pot mixed in, in which kind it is also beneficial for scrofula. It removes itching and pimples in those anointed in the bath, and in another way besides it helps the gouty, mixed with old oil, rubbed up together with sarcophagus stone and quinquefolium pounded in wine, or with lime or with ash. A special plaster is also made by mixing 75 denarii by weight of it with 100 of silver froth, most usefully against the inflammations of ulcers with boar's fat. They think it useful also to anoint with it, and to smear on, with resin, things that spread.

141| The ancients used it chiefly for greasing the axles of vehicles, for an easier turning of the wheels, whence the name; so too as a useful medicine, with that rust of the wheels, for faults of the seat and of the male parts, and axungia by itself.

142| The physicians of old most approved that taken from the kidneys, and, once the veins were removed, they rubbed it often with rainwater and boiled it quite often in a new earthenware pot, and only then stored it. It is agreed that salted fat softens, warms and disperses more, and that it is more useful when washed in wine. Masurius reported that the ancients gave the palm to the fat of the wolf. Therefore new brides were accustomed to anoint the doorposts with it, so that no evil drug be brought in.

143| What holds for fat holds also for tallow in animals that chew the cud, in other ways, of no less power. All of it is prepared by removing the veins, washing in sea water or salt water, then pounding in a mortar with sea water repeatedly sprinkled; afterwards it is cooked until every smell is gone, then brought back to whiteness by constant sun.

144| That from the kidneys is the most praised of all. If, however, old fat is called back to use, they order it first to be melted, then washed oftener in cold water, then melted again with the most fragrant wine poured over. In the same way again and more often they cook it until the rank smell vanishes. Many order that in this way the fats of bulls and lions and panthers and camels are specially treated. The uses will be told in their places.

145| Marrows too are common. All soften, fill, dry, warm. Most praised is that of stags, next of calves, then of he-goats and goats. They are prepared before autumn. Fresh, washed and dried in the shade, then melted and pressed through a sieve through linen cloths, they are put away in an earthen vessel in cold places.

146| Among all things common to animals, gall is perhaps the most outstanding in effect. Its force is to warm, bite, split, draw out, disperse. That of smaller animals is understood to be subtler and for that reason is thought more useful for eye medicines. That of the bull has special potency, even in coating bronze and basins with a golden colour. All gall is prepared fresh, the mouth tied shut with thick thread, let down into boiling water for half an hour, then dried out of the sun and preserved in honey. Only that of the horse is condemned, among poisons. For this reason the flamen of the sacred rites may not touch a horse, although at Rome a horse is even sacrificed in the public rites.

147| Indeed their blood too has a septic force; likewise that of mares, except virgins', eats away and strips the edges of ulcers. Fresh bull's blood is among poisons, except at Aegira. For there the priestess of Earth, about to prophesy, drinks bull's blood before she descends into the cave. So great is that sympathy of which we speak that sometimes it is brought about by religion or place.

148| Drusus, tribune of the plebs, is reported to have drunk goat's blood, when he wished, by the resulting pallor, to accuse his enemy Quintus Caepio of having poisoned him and so bring odium upon him. The blood of he-goats has so great a force that the fine edge of iron tools is hardened more keenly by nothing else, and roughness is smoothed more vigorously than by a file. So the blood of animals cannot be spoken of among common things, and for this reason each will be told in its own effects.

149| For we shall arrange the uses by single ills, and first against snakes. That stags are destruction to these no one is unaware, for if there are any, the stags draw them from their holes and chew them. Nor are they hostile only living and breathing, but even in pieces. It has been said that snakes are put to flight by the smell of their horn if it is burnt; but by the burnt bones from the top of the throat they are said to be gathered together.

150| The hides of the same animal spread beneath give sleep free from that fear; the rennet, drunk in vinegar, against a stroke; and if it has been handled at all, on that day the snake does not strike. The testicles of it also, aged, or the old genitals of the male, are given to good effect in wine; likewise the stomach, which they call centipellio. Snakes also flee altogether those who have a tooth of a stag, or are anointed with the marrow or with the tallow of a stag or calf. But above the highest remedies is preferred the rennet of a fawn cut out of the mother's womb, as we have indicated.

151| With the blood of a stag, if dracontion and cunilago and anchusa are burnt together on mastic wood, snakes, they report, are drawn together, and then scattered if pyrethrum is added to the blood that has been drawn off. I find in Greek authors an animal smaller than a stag and like it only in its hair, called ophion, which Sardinia alone was accustomed to bear. This I suppose has perished, and for that reason I omit the medicines from it.

152| The brain of the boar too is praised against them, with the blood; the liver also, aged, drunk in wine with rue; likewise the fat with honey and resin; in a similar way the boar's liver and a fibre of the gall, 4 denarii in weight, or the brain drunk in wine. Snakes are said to be put to flight when the horn or hairs of goats are set alight, and the ash of the horn, drunk or smeared on, to be strong against strokes; likewise draughts of milk with the taminia grape, or of urine with squill vinegar; goat's cheese applied with origanum, or tallow with wax.

153| Thousands of remedies besides are shown from that animal, as will appear, which I indeed wonder at, since it is denied that it is free from fever. A greater potency belongs to the wild ones of the same kind, which we have said is very numerous, and others again to the he-goats. Democritus still increases the effects of the one that was born single. It is held that strokes of snakes are smeared with goat dung boiled in vinegar, and with the ash of fresh dung in wine, and on the whole those who recover themselves with more difficulty from a snake's stroke recover best in goat sheds.

154| Those who wish to cure more effectively tie on at once the belly of a goat that has been killed, cut open, with the dung found inside. Others fumigate with the fresh flesh of kids with the hair, and by the same smell put snakes to flight. They use also their fresh skin, for blows, and the flesh and the dung of a horse pastured in the field, the rennet of a hare in vinegar, and against the scorpion and the shrew; they say those anointed with hare's rennet are not struck.

155| For those struck by a scorpion, goat dung boiled in vinegar helps more effectively; lard and the broth of it boiled, drunk by those who have swallowed buprestis. Indeed, if anyone says into the ear of an ass that he has been struck by a scorpion, they report that the evil passes at once, and that all venomous creatures flee when its lung is set alight. It also helps those struck by a scorpion to be fumigated with calf's dung.

156| Wounds made by the bite of a mad dog some cut around down to the living parts, and apply calf's flesh and give the broth of the same flesh, boiled, as a drink, or axungia pounded with lime, or he-goat's liver, and they affirm that when this is applied the patient is not even attacked by the fear of water. They praise also goat dung smeared on in wine, and a decoction of badger and cuckoo and swallow, drunk. For the other bites of wild beasts they apply dry goat's cheese with origanum and order it to be drunk, for the bites of a man boiled beef, more effectively of veal, if they do not remove it before the fifth day.

157| The snout of a wolf, aged, they say resists sorceries, and for that reason they fix it on the gates of farms. The same is thought to be done by the skin from the neck, entire, like a sleeve, since so great is the force of the animal, beyond what we have related, that its tracks, trodden on by horses, bring on numbness.

158| For those who have drunk quicksilver, lard is the remedy. By ass's milk, drunk, poisons are quenched, particularly if hyoscyamus has been drunk, or mistletoe, or hemlock, or the sea hare, or opocarpatum, or white lead, or dorycnium, and if rennet has harmed someone, for that too is a poison in the first curdling of milk. Many other uses of it we shall tell, but it will be necessary to remember that it must be used fresh or not long after, warmed; for nothing goes off faster. The bones of the ass, broken and boiled down, are also given against the poison of the sea hare. All the same things are more effective in wild asses.

159| Of wild horses the Greeks did not write, since those lands did not produce them, but yet all the same properties must be understood to be stronger than in horses. By mare's milk the poisons of the sea hare and arrow poisons are overcome. Nor did the Greeks have uri or bisons in their experiments, though the forests of India are stocked with wild cattle; yet in proportion it is fair to believe all the same things more effective from these.

160| So also by cow's milk, they report, all poisons are overcome, most of all those mentioned above, and if ephemerum has been forced down or if cantharides have been given; all are expelled by vomiting, and so cantharides also with goat's broth. Against those, however, that kill by ulceration, calf's or beef tallow helps. For against leeches that have been swallowed butter is a remedy, with vinegar heated with iron, which by itself also helps against poisons, for if there is no oil, it takes its place. It heals the bite of the centipede with honey.

161| By broth of tripe, drunk, they think the poisons mentioned above are overcome, particularly aconites and hemlocks, and likewise by calf's tallow. Fresh goat's cheese is a remedy for those who have drunk mistletoe; milk against cantharides; against a drink of ephemerum, with the taminia grape. Goat's blood boiled with the marrow is taken against arrow poisons,

162| kid's against the rest; the rennet of a kid against mistletoe and white chameleon and bull's blood, against which there is also hare's rennet in vinegar; against the stingray and the strokes or bites of all marine creatures, the rennet of a hare or kid or lamb, a drachma in weight, in wine. Hare's rennet is added to antidotes against poisons as well. The moth too, flying to the lights of lamps, is counted among evil drugs; the opposite of it is goat's liver, as is the gall against sorceries made from the wild weasel. From here we shall turn next to the kinds of diseases.

163| Falling of the hair the fat of a bear restrains, with ladanum and maidenhair mixed in, and corrects bald places, and thinness of the eyebrows with the fungi of lamps and the soot that is in their nozzles; scurf, with wine. The ash of a stag's horn in wine helps for this, and so that no vermin of animals breed in the hair, likewise goat's gall with Cimolian earth and vinegar, in such a way that they dry on the head a little; likewise sow's gall, the urine of a bull. If it is old, it corrects scurf as well, with sulphur added.

164| By the ash of the genitals of an ass they think the hair is thickened and kept from greying, if it is smeared on shaved places, and pounded with lead in oil; it is also thickened by the urine of an ass's foal smeared on; they mix in nard to cover the disgust. Bald patches they smear over with bull's gall that has been warmed with Egyptian alum. Weeping ulcers of the scalp are effectively healed by the urine of a bull, likewise by man's, when old, if cyclamen and sulphur are added; yet more effective is calf's gall, with which, heated with vinegar, nits are also removed.

165| Calf's tallow pounded with salt is most useful for ulcers of the head. Fox fat is also praised, but above all the dung of cats smeared on with mustard in equal measure, the powder or ash of goat's horn, and more that of the he-goat, with natron and tamarisk seed and butter and oil added, the head having been first shaved; in this way they wonderfully hold falling hair, just as eyebrows turn black when smeared with the ash of flesh in oil.

166| By goat's milk nits are said to be removed, by dung with honey bald places are filled in, likewise by the ash of hoofs with pitch. The ash of a hare with myrtle oil holds falling hair. Headache is quieted by water that is left over from the drinking of an ox or ass, and, if we believe it, by the genitals of a male fox tied round, and by the ash of a stag's horn smeared on in vinegar or oil of roses or of iris.

167| Fluxes of the eyes they smear with beef tallow cooked with oil; roughness they anoint with the ash of stag's horn, and they think the tips themselves more effective. To be smeared around with the excrement of wolves helps cataracts, to be anointed with the ash of it with Attic honey, dimnesses, likewise with bear's gall, and epinyctides with boar's fat and oil of roses. The ash of an ass's hoof, anointed on with its own milk, removes scars and whites of the eyes.

168| Beef marrow from the right fore leg, pounded with soot, meets faults of the eyelashes and eyelids and corners of the eyes (the soot is tempered for this use in the manner of a calliblepharum, best from a papyrus wick and sesame oil, the soot wiped off with feathers into a new vessel), but most effectively it restrains hairs plucked out there. With bull's gall and the white of an egg eye salves are made, and dissolved in water they anoint with them for four days.

169| Calf's tallow with goose fat and juice of basil is most suitable for faults of the cheeks. The marrow of the same, with equal weight of wax and of oil, or of oil of roses, with an egg added, is smeared on hardnesses of the cheeks. With soft goat's cheese applied in hot water, fluxes of the eyes are quieted; if there is swelling, in honey; either is to be fomented with warm whey. Dry inflammation is removed by the loins of pigs, burnt and ground and put on.

170| They say goats do not suffer from inflamed eyes, since they eat certain herbs, and likewise roes; for this reason they order their dung, wrapped in wax, to be swallowed at the new moon. And since they see at night equally well, they think that the weak-sighted, called nyctalopes by the Greeks, are cured by he-goat's blood, and by the liver of a goat boiled in harsh wine. Some anoint with the juice of a roasted liver, or the gall of a goat, and they instruct that the flesh be eaten and the eyes steamed with it while it cooks; this too they judge to matter, that it should be of a reddish colour.

171| They wish the eyes also to be fumigated with the liver boiled in pots, some with it roasted. They take the gall of a goat in several ways: with honey against dimness, with a third part of white hellebore against glaucomata, with wine against scars and whites and dimness and pterygia and argema; for the eyelids, a hair having first been pulled out, with the juice of a pot-herb in such a way that the ointment dries; against ruptured coats, with a woman's milk.

172| For all they think aged gall more effective. Nor do they reject dung smeared on in honey for fluxes, and against pains marrow, likewise the lung of a hare, and for dimnesses gall with raisin wine or honey. They instruct also that the eyes be rubbed with wolf's fat or marrow against inflammations. For they say those who have a fox's tongue in a bracelet will not suffer inflamed eyes.

173| Pain and faults of the ears are cured by the urine of a boar kept in a glass vessel, the gall of a boar or sow or ox with cedar oil and oil of roses in equal portions, but especially that of a bull with leek juice, lukewarm, or with honey, if they suppurate, and against a heavy smell by itself, warmed in a pomegranate rind. For ruptures in that part it heals effectively with woman's milk.

174| Some think that the ears should also be washed out in this way in heaviness of hearing; others, rinsed beforehand with warm water, pour in the cast skin of snakes with vinegar (they enclose it in wool) or, if the heaviness is greater, boar's gall with myrrh and rue, warmed in a pomegranate rind, also fat lard; likewise fresh ass's dung is dropped in with oil of roses, all warmed. More useful is the froth of a horse or the ash of fresh horse dung with oil of roses, fresh butter, beef tallow with goose fat, the urine of a goat or bull or old fuller's urine, heated by the steam rising through the neck of a flask (they mix in a third part of vinegar and a little myrrh),

175| the dung of a calf that has not yet tasted grass, mixed with its gall and with the skin that snakes cast off, the ears having been warmed first; these medicines are enclosed in wool. Calf's tallow with goose fat and juice of basil also helps; the marrow of the same poured in with pounded cumin added; the seed of a boar, caught from the sow before it touches the ground, against pains;

176| for broken ears, glue made from the genitals of calves and dissolved in water; for other faults, the fat of foxes, likewise goat's gall with warm oil of roses or leek juice, or, if anything there is ruptured, with a woman's milk; if there is heaviness of hearing, ox gall with the urine of a goat or he-goat, or if there is pus. In whatever use, they think these more effective when fumigated in a goat's horn for 20 days.

177| They praise also the rennet of a hare, a third part of a denarius, and half of sacopenium, in Amminean wine. Parotid swellings are reduced by bear's fat, with equal weight of wax and bull's tallow (some add hypocistis), and by butter alone smeared on, if they are first fomented with the juice of boiled fenugreek, more effectively with strychnon. Foxes' testicles also help, and dried bull's blood pounded, the urine of a goat warmed and dropped into the ears, and its dung smeared on with axungia.

178| Loose teeth the ash of a stag's horn firms and soothes their pains, whether rubbed on or used as a rinse. Some think the powder of the raw horn more effective for all the same uses. Dentifrices are made both ways. A great remedy lies also in the ash of the head of wolves. It is certain that bones are generally found in their excrement; these tied on have the same effect, as do hares' rennets poured through the ear against pains. And the ash of their head is a dentifrice and, with nard added, soothes the foul smell of the mouth.

179| Some prefer to mix in the ash of mouse heads. In the side of a hare a bone like a needle is found; they advise scarifying the teeth with this when they pain. An ox's ankle bone, set alight and applied, steadies those that are loose and painful; the ash of the same, with myrrh, is a dentifrice. The bones also from the hoofs of swine, burnt, give the same use, likewise the bones from the sockets of the hams, around which the hip joints turn.

180| It is known that worms of beasts of burden are cured by these, put down into the throat, but also that teeth are steadied by their being burnt, and those troubled by a blow with ass's milk or the ash of the teeth of the same, likewise the lichen of a horse infused with oil through the ear. This is not the hippomanes, which in any case, being harmful, I omit, but is on the knees of horses and above the hoofs.

181| Besides, in the heart of horses a bone is found like the largest canine teeth; with this they show that toothache is scarified, or with a tooth taken from a dead horse's jaw in the number of the one that pains. Anaxilaus has handed down that the discharge of mares after mating, burnt in wicks, represents in monstrous fashion the powers of the lichen of horses' heads, and likewise from asses. For hippomanes has such force in sorcery that, poured upon a mixture of bronze into the likeness of the mare of Olympia, it drives stallions brought to it to the madness of mating.

182| Carpenter's glue also helps teeth, boiled in water and smeared on, and soon a little drawn off, so that they are rinsed at once with wine in which the rinds of a sweet pomegranate have been boiled. It is held effective also to rinse the teeth with goat's milk or with bull's gall. The ash of the ankle bones of fresh goats, and of nearly all farmyard four-footed animals, pleases as a dentifrice, so that the same things need not be said too often.

183| That the skin of the face is smoothed and made tender and white by ass's milk they think, and it is known that certain women foment their cheeks seven times a day, keeping the number. Poppaea, wife of the emperor Nero, set up this practice, mixing the tubs of her baths in this way, with herds of she-asses accompanying her for this purpose. Eruptions of phlegm on the face are removed by butter smeared on, more effectively with white lead; but pure butter, those faults that creep, with barley meal laid over; ulcers on the face, by the membrane of a calving cow, wet.

184| It may seem frivolous, yet is not to be omitted on account of women's desires, that the ankle bone of a white bullock, boiled for 40 days and nights until it dissolves into liquid, and smeared on with a bit of linen, produces whiteness and smoothing of the skin. With bull's dung, they say, the cheeks redden, so that it is not better to smear on crocodilea; they order cold fomentation both before and afterwards.

185| For spots and things that discolour the skin, calf's dung with oil and gum, kneaded by hand, corrects; for ulcers of the mouth and cracks, calf's or ox tallow with goose fat and juice of basil. There is another mixture also: calf's tallow with stag's marrow and leaves of the white thorn, pounded together. The marrow with resin does the same, or, if it is cow's, also broth of cow's flesh.

186| Lichens of the face are overcome most outstandingly by glue made from the genitals of calves, dissolved in vinegar with native sulphur, mixed with a fig branch, so that it is smeared on fresh twice a day; likewise leprosies by it boiled in honey and vinegar, which a he-goat's liver, warm, smeared on also removes, as goat's gall removes elephantiasis; moreover leprosies and scurf are removed by the gall of a bull with natron added, and by ass's urine around the time the Dog Star rises; blemishes on the face by the gall of either, broken down in water by itself, the sun and winds being avoided after the skin is stripped.

187| A similar effect is found in the gall of a bull or calf with seed of cunila, and with the ash of a stag's horn, if it is burnt when the Dog Star is rising. With ass's tallow the colour is restored to scars, above all from lichen and leprosies. The gall of a he-goat also removes freckles, with cheese mixed in, with native sulphur, and ash of sponge, to the thickness of honey.

188| Some have preferred to use aged gall, mixed with warm bran of one obol's weight, and 4 of honey, the blemishes having first been rubbed. Effective also is the tallow of the same with melanthium and sulphur and iris, for cracks of the lips, with goose fat and stag's marrow and resin and lime. I find in authors that for those who have freckles the use of sacrifices of the magic arts is denied.

189| By cow's or goat's milk tonsils and ulcerated windpipes are helped. It is used as a gargle, lukewarm, as is the practice, pressed out or warmed. Goat's is more useful boiled with mallow and a little salt. For ulceration of the tongue and windpipe the broth of tripe, gargled, helps; for the tonsils in particular the dried kidneys of foxes, pounded with honey and smeared on; for quinsy bull's or goat's gall with honey, the liver of a badger in water. Butter corrects heaviness and ulcers of the mouth.

190| A thorn or anything else lodged in the throat, when the outside is rubbed over with the dung of a cat, they report is either brought up or slips down. Scrofulous swellings are dispersed by the gall of a boar or of an ox, lukewarm, smeared on (for the rennet of a hare in wine on a bit of linen is applied only to ulcerated ones),

191| and they are dispersed by the ash of the hoof of an ass or horse smeared on in oil or water, and by warmed urine, and the ash of an ox's hoof in water, also boiling dung in vinegar, goat's tallow with lime or dung boiled in vinegar, the testicles of a fox. Soap helps too, an invention of the Gauls for reddening the hair. It is made from tallow and ash, the best from beech and goat, in two forms, thick and liquid, both more in use among the Germans by men than by women.

192| Pains of the neck are to be rubbed with butter or bear's fat, stiffnesses with beef tallow, which also helps scrofulous swellings with oil. The unbending pain they call opisthotonus is relieved by goat's urine poured into the ears or dung smeared on with bulbs; crushed nails, by gall of any animal bound around; hangnails of the fingers, by dried bull's gall dissolved in hot water. Some add sulphur and alum, of all in equal weight.

193| Cough a wolf's liver in lukewarm wine cures, bear's gall with honey mixed in, or the ash of the tips of an ox's horns, or the spittle of a horse, drunk for three days (they report the horse dies), the lung of a stag with its own gullet dried in smoke, then pounded and taken in honey as a daily linctus; more effective for this is the subulo, of the stag kind.

194| Those spitting blood are cured by the ash of a stag's horn, and by the rennet of a hare, a third part of a denarius, drunk with Samian earth and myrtle wine; the ash of its dung drunk in wine in the evening cures night coughs; the hairs of a hare, fumigated, draw difficult expectorations from the lungs. Purulent ulcerations of the chest and lung and the foul smell of the breath from the lung butter helps most effectively, boiled down with an equal measure of Attic honey until it turns reddish and taken in the morning to the measure of a spoon; some have preferred to add larch resin instead of honey.

195| If blood is brought up, they report ox blood effective, taken moderately and with vinegar. For to trust the bull's is rash; but bull glue, 3 obols, is drunk with hot water in an old spitting of blood.

196| An ulcerated stomach is restored by a drink of ass's milk, likewise of cow's; its gnawings by beef cooked with vinegar and wine mixed; flowings by the ash of a stag's horn; spitting of blood by fresh kid's blood, three cyathi, drunk boiling with sharp vinegar in equal measure, rennet in a third part drunk in vinegar;

197| pains of the liver by a wolf's dried liver in honeyed wine, an ass's dried liver pounded with 2 parts of parsley and 3 nuts in honey and taken in food, he-goat's blood fitted to food. For asthmatics most effective of all is a drink of the blood of wild horses, next that of ass's milk, lukewarm, of cow's milk boiled in such a way that the whey of it is drunk, a cyathus of white cress added to 2 heminae and soaked in water; then diluted with honey. The liver of a fox, or its lung in dark wine, or bear's gall in water, also loosens the passages of the breath.

198| Pains of the loins, and whatever else needs softening, are properly rubbed with bear's fat, and the ash of boar's or swine's dung, aged, is sprinkled into a drink of wine. (The Magi too bring their inventions: first of all, that the rage of he-goats is calmed if the beard is stroked, and that when it is cut off they do not go off into another flock.) For sciatica they apply ox dung warmed in leaves on hot ashes. To this they mix goat dung and, with an oiled cloth placed beneath, they order it to be held, boiling, in the hollow of the hand as long as it can be borne, so that if the left side pains, this treatment is done in the right hand, or the opposite, and they order the dung to be lifted for this use with the point of a bronze needle.

199| The measure of the treatment is until the warmth is felt to have reached the loins; afterwards they smear the hand with pounded leek, and the loins with the dung itself with honey. In that pain they also advise devouring the testicles of a hare. In pain of the kidneys they order the kidneys of a hare to be devoured raw, or at least cooked, so that they are not touched by the teeth. Pain of the belly, indeed, they say does not attack those who have the ankle bone of a hare.

200| The spleen is quieted by the gall of a boar or sow, drunk; by the ash of a stag's horn in vinegar; most effectively, however, by the aged spleen of an ass, so that the benefit is felt in three days. The dung of an ass's foal, the first it has passed (they call it polea), the Syrians give in honeyed vinegar. The tongue of a horse, aged, is also given in wine as an immediate remedy, as Caecilius Bion handed down that he learned from barbarians, and an ox's spleen in similar fashion, fresh, roasted or boiled in food. For pains of the spleen, 20 heads of garlic, pounded with a sextarius of vinegar, are also applied in an ox's bladder.

201| For the same cause the Magi order a calf's spleen to be bought, at whatever price is named, with no hesitation over the price, since this too pertains to the rite, and divided lengthwise, it is attached on both sides to a tunic, and the one who puts it on lets it fall to his feet; then, gathered up, it is dried in the shade. While this is done, the spleen of the sick man, it is said, subsides at the same time and he is freed from the disease. The lung of foxes also helps, dried to ash and drunk in water, likewise the spleen of kids applied.

202| The belly is stopped by the blood of a stag, likewise the ash of the horn; the boar's liver, drunk in wine without salt and fresh, likewise roasted, or the swine's, or the he-goat's boiled down to a fifth, a hemina in wine; the rennet of a hare in wine, the size of a chickpea, or, if there is fever, in water (some add gall nut, others are content with the hare's blood alone); boiled milk; the ash of horse dung in a drink of water; the ash of the lowest part of an old bull's horn sprinkled into a drink of water; he-goat's blood cooked with charcoal; goat hide boiled with its own hair, the juice drunk down;

203| the rennet of a horse and goat's blood or marrow or liver. The belly is loosened by wolf's gall with elaterium smeared on the navel, or a drink of mare's milk, likewise of goat's with salt and honey; goat's gall with juice of cyclamen and a pinch of alum (some prefer to add natron and water); bull's gall pounded with wormwood and put under as a suppository; butter taken freely.

204| Coeliac complaints and dysentery are cured by cow's liver, by the ash of a stag's horn taken with 3 fingers in a drink of water, by the rennet of a hare kneaded in bread, or, if they draw blood, in barley meal, by the ash of boar's or swine's or hare's dung sprinkled in a drink of lukewarm wine. Veal broth too, they report, is commonly given among the helps for coeliac and dysenteric patients. A drink of ass's milk is more useful with honey added, and no less effective for either fault is the ash of the dung in wine,

205| likewise the polea mentioned above; the rennet of a horse, which some call hippace, even if they draw blood; or the ash of dung and the powder of pounded teeth of the same; and a drink of boiled cow's milk is salutary. For dysentery they instruct that a little honey be added and, if there are gripings, the ash of a stag's horn or bull's gall mixed with cumin, and flesh of a gourd applied to the navel. Fresh cow's cheese is introduced for either fault, likewise butter, 4 heminae, with a sextans of turpentine resin, or with boiled mallow, or with oil of roses.

206| Calf's or ox tallow is also given, likewise marrow (and it is cooked with a little meal and wax and oil, so that it can be sipped; marrow is also worked into bread), goat's milk boiled down by half; if there are also gripings, protropum is added. Some think it sufficient remedy for gripings to drink hare's rennet in lukewarm wine, even once; the more cautious smear the belly also with goat's blood with barley meal and resin.

207| For all fluxes of the belly they advise smearing on soft cheese, and aged cheese, pounded into meal, to be given to coeliac and dysenteric patients, a cyathus of cheese in 3 cyathi of table wine. Goat's blood boiled with the marrow helps the dysenteric; goat's liver, roasted, those with coeliac complaints, and even more he-goat's, boiled in harsh wine and drunk, or placed on the navel in myrtle oil. Some boil down from 3 sextarii of water to a hemina, with rue added.

208| They use also the roasted spleen of a goat or he-goat, and the tallow of a he-goat in bread baked in ashes, the goat's from the kidneys especially, to be swallowed by itself and followed at once by a little cold water. Some bid tallow boiled in water be sipped, with barley meal and cumin and dill and vinegar mixed in. They also smear the belly of coeliac patients with dung boiled in honey.

209| For both faults they use also the rennet of a kid drunk in myrtle wine, the size of a bean, and the blood of the same formed into a food, which they call sanguiculus. For the dysenteric they also pour in bull glue dissolved in hot water. Calf's dung boiled in wine disperses flatulence. For faults of the intestines the rennet of stags is of great benefit, boiled with lentil and beet and so taken in food; the ash of hare's hair boiled with honey; a drink of goat's milk boiled with mallow, a little salt added; if rennet is also added, it works with greater benefit. The same force is found in goat's tallow in some gruel,

210| so that cold water is drunk straight afterwards. Likewise the ash of the thighs of a kid is marvellously reported to mend ruptured intestines, and hare's dung, boiled with honey and swallowed every day in a quantity of a bean, so that it has cured cases given up as hopeless. They praise also the juice of a goat's head boiled with its hairs.

211| Tenesmus, that is, a frequent and vain wish to rise, is removed by a drink of ass's milk, likewise cow's. The kinds of tapeworm are driven out by the ash of a stag's horn drunk. The bones which we said are found in the excrement of the wolf, if they have not touched the ground, cure colic tied to the arm. The polea mentioned above also helps greatly, boiled in must syrup; also the powder of swine's dung with cumin added, in water in which rue has been boiled; the ash of a tender stag's horn mixed with African snails pounded with their shell, in a drink of wine.

212| The torments of the bladder and of stones are helped by the urine of a boar and the bladder itself taken as food, more effectively if both are first steeped in smoke. The bladder is to be eaten boiled, and that of a sow by a woman. Little stones or hardnesses like little stones, white, are found in their livers, as in the common swine, and when these are pounded and drunk in wine they say stones are expelled. The boar's own urine is so heavy to him that, unless voided, he has not strength for flight and is overcome as if bound;

213| they report that they are burnt by it. The kidneys of a hare, aged and drunk in wine, expel stones. In the joint of the hams of swine we said there is a bone which, boiled, makes a broth useful for the urine. The kidneys of an ass, aged and pounded, given in neat wine, cure the bladder. The lichens of horses drunk in wine or honeyed wine for 40 days expel stones. The ash of the horse's hoof in wine or water also helps, likewise the dung of goats in honeyed wine, more effectively of wild ones, and the ash of goat's hair too; for carbuncles of the private parts, the brain of a boar or sow, and the blood.

214| Faults, however, which creep in the same part, their liver, burnt, above all on juniper wood, with papyrus paper and arrhenicum, cures; the ash of dung; bull's gall worked with Egyptian alum and myrrh to the thickness of honey, with beet cooked in wine laid on top; the flesh also. Running ulcers are treated by tallow with the marrow of a calf boiled in wine, goat's gall with honey and juice of bramble, or if they spread; they say dung also helps, with honey or with vinegar, and butter by itself.

215| Swelling of the testicles is held in check by calf's tallow with natron added, or by its dung boiled in vinegar. Incontinence of urine is checked by a boar's bladder, if it is eaten roasted; the ash of the hoofs of a boar or sow sprinkled in a drink; the bladder of a sow, burnt and drunk; likewise of a kid, or its lung; the brain of a hare in wine; its roasted testicles, or the rennet with goose fat in barley meal; the kidneys of an ass, pounded and drunk in neat wine. The Magi show that, with the ash of a boar's genitals drunk in sweet wine, the patient makes water in the bed of a dog and adds words, that he himself may not make water as a dog in his own bed. Again, a sow's bladder moves urine, if it has not touched the ground, laid on the pubic region.

216| For faults of the seat bear's gall with fat is outstandingly helpful; some add silver froth and frankincense. Butter with goose fat and oil of roses helps; the things themselves set the measure, so that they are easy to smear on. Bull's gall, on little pieces of torn linen, heals them excellently and brings fissures to a scar. For swellings in that part, calf's tallow, above all from the groin, with rue; other faults are cured by goat's blood with barley meal, likewise goat's gall for condylomata by itself, likewise wolf's gall in wine.

217| Boils and abscesses in any part bear's blood disperses, likewise bull's, dried and pounded. The chief remedy, however, is reported to be in the stone of the wild ass, which it is said to void in its urine when killed, more liquid at first, but thickening itself on the ground; tied to the thigh, this disperses all attacks and frees from all suppuration. It is rare to find, and not from every wild ass, but they celebrate it marvellously as a remedy. The urine of an ass with melanthium also helps, and the ash of a horse's hoof smeared on with oil and water, the blood of a horse, especially a stallion's, ox blood, likewise gall.

218| The flesh also has the same effects, laid on hot, and the ash of the hoof in water or honey, the urine of goats, the flesh of he-goats too boiled in water, or dung of theirs boiled with honey, boar's gall, the urine of swine on wool applied. It is known that the thighs are chafed and burned by riding; most useful for all causes from this is to smear the froth from a horse's mouth on the groin. The groin also swells from ulcers. A remedy is 3 horse hairs tied with as many knots within the ulcer.

219| Bear's fat and bull's tallow relieve gout, in equal weight, with wax in the same weight. Some add hypocistis and oak gall. Others prefer goat's tallow with goat dung and saffron and mustard, or ivy stalks pounded, and perdicium, or the flower of the wild cucumber.

220| Cow dung with the lees of vinegar is also much praised, and the dung of a calf that has not yet tasted grass, or the blood of a bull by itself; a fox boiled alive until only the bones are left; or a wolf boiled alive in oil in the manner of a cerate; goat's tallow with an equal part of helxine and a third of mustard; the ash of goat dung with axle-grease. They also report that sciatica is burned out with this dung applied boiling hot beneath the big toes, with the greatest benefit; that bear's gall is most useful for diseases of the joints, as are hares' feet tied on; and that gout is eased if a person constantly carries about with him the foot of a hare cut off while it is alive.

221| For chilblains, bear's fat heals them and all cracks of the feet, more effectively with alum added; so do goat's tallow, the meal of a horse's teeth, and the gall of a boar or pig with fat. A lung laid on helps even if the feet are merely rubbed raw or bruised by a knock; if they are truly scorched by cold, the ash of hare's fur; the lung of the same animal, cut up, for bruises, or the ash of the lung.

222| Sunburn is treated most suitably with ass's tallow, and likewise with ox tallow and oil of roses. For corns, cracks and defects of callus, fresh dung of a boar or pig applied and removed on the third day cures them; so do the ash of knucklebones, and the lung of a boar, pig or stag; for chafing from shoes, the urine of an ass applied with its own mud; for corns, ox tallow with fine meal of frankincense; for chilblains, burnt leather, better if from an old shoe; for hurts from footwear, the ash of goatskin in oil.

223| Pain from varicose veins is eased by the ash of calf dung boiled with lily bulbs, with a little honey added, and likewise all inflammations and swellings threatening to suppurate. The same remedy also helps gout and joint diseases, especially from male calves. For joints that are rubbed sore, the gall of boars or pigs laid on in a warmed linen cloth; the dung of a calf that has not yet tasted grass; likewise goat dung boiled in vinegar with honey. Rough nails are put right by calf tallow, and likewise goat tallow with sandaraca mixed in. Warts are removed by the ash of calf dung in vinegar, and by an ass's urine and its mud.

224| For the falling sickness it helps to have eaten bears' testicles, or to have drunk boars' in mare's milk or in water, or boar's urine in honeyed vinegar, more effectively that which has dried in its own bladder. The testicles of pigs are also given, aged and ground up in sow's milk, with abstinence from wine beforehand and afterwards for five days running. Hares' lungs preserved in salt are also given, with a third part of frankincense in white wine for 30 days, and likewise the rennet of the same animal;

225| an ass's brain in honeyed water, first smoked in leaves, half an ounce for 7 days; the ash of its hooves drunk, two spoonfuls, through the whole month; likewise testicles preserved in salt and sprinkled into a drink, best in the milk of she-asses or in water. The membrane of their afterbirth, especially if they have borne a male, smelled as the fit comes on, checks the falling sickness. There are those who prescribe that the heart of a black male be eaten with bread under the open sky on the first or second lunar day; others prescribe the flesh, and some the blood diluted with vinegar to be drunk for 40 days.

226| Some mix the urine with iron-water from the smithies, and with the same drink treat the frenzied as well. For those with the falling sickness the drinking of mare's milk is also given, and the lichen of a horse, to be drunk in honeyed vinegar; goat's flesh roasted on a man's funeral pyre is also given, as the Magi wish, and its tallow boiled with an equal weight of bull's gall and stored in a little bag made of the gall, so that it does not touch the ground, then drunk from water held aloft. The disease itself is detected by the smell of burnt goat's horn or stag's horn. For the stricken by a planet, the urine of a young ass, with nard mixed in, is said to help when rubbed on.

227| For jaundice: the ash of stag's horn; the blood of an ass in wine; likewise the dung of a young ass, the first it passed after birth, given the size of a bean in wine, cures within the third day. The same power exists in the foal of a horse, and in like manner. For broken bones the ash of the jawbones of a boar or pig is immediate in effect; likewise boiled lard bound around knits them with marvellous speed. For broken ribs, goat dung in old wine is uniquely praised: it opens, draws out, and heals thoroughly.

228| Fevers are kept off by the flesh of stags, as we have said; and those that return after a fixed number of days, by the eye of a wolf, the right one, salted and tied on, if we believe the Magi. There is a kind of fever which they call amphemerinon; they report that a person is freed of it if he takes 3 drops of blood from the vein of an ass's ear in 2 heminae of water. For quartan fevers the Magi bid that a cat's excrement be tied on with the toe of an owl, and, to prevent relapse, not be taken off for seven rounds.

229| Who, I ask, could have discovered this? What is this mixture? Why was the toe of an owl chosen above all? The more restrained have said that the liver of a cat killed when the moon is waning, aged in salt, should be drunk in wine before the onsets of the quartan. The same Magi smear the toes of the feet and hands with the ash of cow dung sprinkled with boys' urine. They tie on a hare's heart, and give its rennet to drink before the onsets. Fresh goat's cheese with honey, with the whey carefully pressed out, is also given.

230| For the melancholic, calf dung boiled in wine is a remedy. The lethargic are roused by the lichen of an ass applied to the nostrils with vinegar, by the smell of burning goat's horn or of hair, or by boar's liver; and so it is given also to the drowsy. Consumptives are treated with a wolf's liver in thin wine, with the bacon of a sow fed on herbs, or with ass's flesh taken in broth; this is the way they chiefly treat that disease in Achaia. They also report that it helps to draw in through a reed the smoke of dried dung, from an ox fed on green fodder, or the point of an ox's horn burnt, 2 spoonfuls by measure, with honey added, swallowed in pills.

231| Not a few report that consumption and cough are cured by goat tallow in porridge of alica, or fresh tallow melted with honeyed wine, so that an ounce is added to a cyathus and stirred in with a sprig of rue. A reliable authority affirms that a consumptive given up for lost recovered on a cyathus of chamois tallow with an equal measure of milk. There are those who have written that the ash of pig dung helped in raisin wine, and the lung of a stag, especially a young stag with first horns, dried in smoke and ground up in wine.

232| For dropsy, the urine from a boar's bladder is of help, given a little at a time in drink, more effective when it has dried with its own bladder; and likewise the dung of bulls above all, but also of oxen (I speak of the herd animals), called bolbiton, the ash of it, 3 spoonfuls in a hemina of honeyed wine; the dung of a cow for women, of the other sex for men, which the Magi have hidden away as though it were a mystery; the dung of a male calf applied; the ash of calf dung with the seed of staphylinus in equal portion in wine; goat's blood with the marrow. They think that of a he-goat is more effective, particularly if it is fed on mastic.

233| For erysipelas, bear's fat is smeared on, especially that which lies by the kidneys; fresh calf dung or ox dung; dry goat's cheese with leek; shavings of stag's hide scraped with pumice and pounded in vinegar. For redness with itching, the foam of a horse or the ash of a hoof; for eruptions of phlegm, the ash of ass's dung with butter; for black pimples, dry goat's cheese with honey and vinegar in the baths, with the oil put away; for pustules, the ash of pig dung smeared on with water, or the ash of stag's horn;

234| for sprains, fresh dung of boar or pig, and likewise of calf; the fresh foam of a boar with vinegar; goat dung with honey; beef laid on. For swellings, pig dung warmed under a tile and ground with oil. For hardnesses of the body of every kind, wolf fat applied softens them best. In things that need to be broken open, ox dung warmed in ashes does the most good, or goat dung boiled in wine or vinegar; for boils, ox tallow with salt, or, if there are pains, melted with oil and without salt, and goat tallow in the same way;

235| in burns, bear's fat with lily roots; boar or pig dung, aged; the ash of bristles from these animals, taken from plasterers' brushes, ground with fat; the ash of an ox knucklebone with wax and stag marrow; bull's gall; the dung of a hare, and the dung of goats. Glue is said to heal without a scar. The best is made from the ears and genitals of bulls,

236| and nothing helps burns more effectively, but nothing is so readily adulterated, any hides and even boiled shoes, if old, being used. The Rhodian is the most reliable, and painters and physicians use it; this too is thought better the whiter it is, while the black and woody kind is condemned.

237| For pains of the sinews, goat dung boiled in vinegar with honey is thought most useful, even for a sinew that is festering. Spasms and injuries from blows they treat with boar dung gathered in spring and dried; thus too they treat charioteers who have been dragged or wounded by a wheel, and in any case of bruised blood, even if it is applied fresh.

238| There are those who think it more useful to have boiled it in vinegar. Indeed they promise that this meal, taken as a drink in vinegar, is salutary for those with ruptures and convulsions, and those thrown down. The more fastidious drink its ash in water, and they say that the emperor Nero too was accustomed to be restored by this drink, when he wished in this way too to win approval at the Trigarium. They think pig dung to have the next greatest power.

239| Blood is stopped by the rennet of a stag in vinegar, and likewise of a hare, and of this the ash of the hairs also; likewise the ash of ass's dung applied (the power is greater from males, with vinegar mixed in and laid in wool on any flow); similarly from a horse, the ash of the head and thighs, or of calves' dung, applied in vinegar; likewise of goat's horn or of goat dung in vinegar.

240| The matter that comes from a he-goat's liver when cut open is more effective, and the ash of either drunk in wine or applied to the nostrils in vinegar; also the ash of a he-goat's skin bag, at least a wine-skin, with an equal weight of resin: in this way blood is stopped and a wound is glued together. The rennet of a kid in vinegar, and the ash of its thighs burnt, are reported to be similarly powerful.

241| Ulcers on the shins and legs are healed by bear's fat with red ochre mixed in. Those that creep are treated with the gall of a boar mixed with resin and white lead, the ash of the jaws of a boar or pig, dry pig dung applied, and likewise goat dung worked up and slightly warmed in vinegar. The others are cleansed and filled with butter, with the ash of stag's horn or stag marrow, with bull's gall and cyprine or iris oil. Fresh pig dung, or the meal of aged dung, is smeared on wounds made by iron. Into phagedaenic ulcers and fistulas is put bull's gall with leek juice or women's milk, or dried blood with the herb cotyledon.

242| Cancers are cured by a hare's rennet sprinkled in wine with an equal weight of caper; gangrenes by bear's gall applied with a feather; and the ash of ass's hooves, sprinkled on, treats ulcers that creep. Horse's blood eats away the flesh by a corrosive power, as does the ash of old horse dung; but for those which in the class of ulcers they call phagedaenae, the ash of ox hide with honey. Calf's flesh does not allow fresh wounds to swell, nor ox dung with honey.

243| The ash of calf dung, with woman's milk, heals foul ulcers and those they call cacoethe; fresh wounds inflicted by iron are treated with bull's glue melted, removed on the third day. Dry goat's cheese in vinegar and honey cleanses ulcers; and for those that creep, tallow with wax checks them, and the same with pitch and sulphur added completes the cure. The ash of a kid's thighs in woman's milk is similarly beneficial for cacoethe, and against carbuncles the brain of a sow, roasted and applied.

244| The itch of man is best abolished by the marrow of asses and by their urine applied with their own mud, and also by butter (which is beneficial in beasts of burden) with hot resin, by bull's glue melted in vinegar with lime added, and by goat's gall with the ash of alum; and boae are treated with ox dung, from which they took their name. The mange of dogs is cured with fresh ox blood, smeared on again when it dries and washed off the next day with lye ash.

245| Thorns and the like are drawn from the body by cat's excrement, and likewise by that of the goat in wine, and by any rennet, but chiefly a hare's, with fine meal of frankincense and oil, or with an equal weight of mistletoe or with propolis. Black scars are brought back to colour by ass's tallow; calf's gall, warmed, thins them. Physicians add myrrh and honey and saffron, and keep it in a bronze box; some also mix in flower of copper.

246| The monthly purgings of women are helped by bull's gall applied in greasy wool (Olympias of Thebes adds oesypum and natron), by the ash of stag's horn drunk, which likewise helps women suffering in the womb, applied as well; and bull's gall applied with opium, two obols each. It also helps to fumigate the womb with stag's hair. They say that hinds, when they perceive they are with young, swallow a little stone, which, found in their excrement or in the womb (for it is found there too), tied on, protects the offspring.

247| Small bones too are found in the heart and in the womb, extremely useful to women with child and in labour. For the pumice-like stone that is found in the same way in the womb of cows we have spoken in our account of the nature of cattle. Wolf fat, applied, softens the womb, and the liver relieves its pains; to have eaten wolf flesh helps women about to give birth, or if the one who has eaten is near them when they are beginning labour, so much so that it avails even against harms brought upon them. But for that same man to come in upon them after labour has begun is ruinous.

248| The hare too is of great use to women. The dried lung drunk helps the womb; the liver drunk with Samian earth in water, flows; the rennet, the afterbirth (baths on the day before are to be avoided), and applied also with saffron and leek juice; laid in a fleece it expels dead births. If the womb of hares is taken in food, they think males are conceived; the same is achieved by their testicles and rennet; a foetus taken from the womb of a hare is said to bring back renewable fertility to those who have stopped bearing.

249| In the same way the Magi give a man the matter of a hare's foetus to drink, and a maiden 9 grains of its dung, so that her breasts stay firm for ever. They smear the rennet on with honey for the same purpose, and the blood where they do not wish plucked hairs to grow again. For inflation of the womb it helps to smear on boar or pig dung with oil. The meal of the dried dung checks more effectively, if sprinkled into a drink, or if pregnant women or women in childbed are racked with pain.

250| Sow's milk drunk with honeyed wine helps the births of women; drunk by itself, it fills the failing breasts of women in childbed. The same breasts, smeared around with the blood of a sow, grow less. If they are in pain, they are soothed by a drink of ass's milk, which, taken with honey added, also helps their purgings. The aged tallow of the same animal heals ulcerations of the womb, and laid on in a fleece softens hardnesses of the womb. By itself, fresh or aged, smeared on with water, it has the power of a depilatory.

251| The spleen of the same animal, aged and smeared on with water, produces abundance in the breasts and corrects the womb by fumigation. The fumigation of an ass's hoof ripens birth, so that even a dead birth is called forth; it is used in no other way, since it kills a living birth. The dung of the same animal, if applied fresh, is said to check flows of blood marvellously, and likewise the ash of the same dung, which also benefits the womb when applied.

252| Horse foam smeared on for 40 days, before the hairs first appear, extinguishes them; likewise a decoction of stag's horn; better if the horns are fresh. Wombs washed out with mare's milk are helped. But if a dead birth is detected, the lichen of a mare drunk in sweet wine expels it, as does a hoof used for fumigation or dry dung. Prolapsed wombs are checked by butter poured in. A hardened womb is opened by ox gall mixed with oil of roses, with a fleece with turpentine resin laid on outwardly.

253| They say that by fumigation with the dung of a male ox prolapsed wombs are pressed back and births are helped, and conceptions by a drink of cow's milk. It is certain that sterility comes from the harassment of childbirth. Olympias of Thebes affirms that this is put right by bull's gall and the fat of serpents and verdigris and honey on the treated places before intercourse. Calf's gall also, sprinkled on at the time of intercourse during the purgings, softens even old hardnesses of the womb and lessens flow, when the navel has been anointed with it, and altogether benefits the womb.

254| They set the dose at a denarius' weight of gall and a third as much of opium, with as much almond oil mixed in as seems enough; this they apply on wool. The gall of a bull calf, pounded with half its quantity of honey, is kept for the womb. If women eat the flesh of a calf roasted with aristolochia around the time of conception, they are promised that they will bear a male. Calf's marrow boiled down in wine and water with suet is beneficial applied to ulcerations of the womb, and so are the fat of foxes and the dung of cats, the latter applied with resin and rose oil.

255| They think fumigating the womb with goat's horn most useful. The blood of wild goats with palma marina removes hair; the gall of the other goats, sprinkled on, softens callus of the womb and brings about conception after menstruation. In this way too the effect of a depilatory is obtained: after the hairs have been plucked out it is kept smeared on for three days. Midwives promise that a flux, however excessive, is checked by drinking goat's urine, and also if the dung is applied. The goat's membrane in which the kid is born, dried and taken in a drink of wine, expels the afterbirth.

256| They think fumigating the womb with kid's hair useful, and in a flux of blood that rennet should be drunk, or applied with the seed of hyoscyamus. If a woman's loins are smeared with the blood of a tick taken from a black wild ox, Osthanes says that she conceives a distaste for sex; and the same with love, he says, if she drinks a he-goat's urine, with nard mixed in because of the disgust.

257| For infants nothing is more useful than butter, by itself or with honey, especially in teething, both for the gums and for ulcers of the mouth. A wolf's tooth tied on as an amulet keeps away infants' frights and the ailments of teething, and a wolfskin does the same. Indeed, wolves' largest teeth tied on to horses too are said to give them tireless speed.

258| Hare's rennet smeared on the breast stops looseness of the bowels in infants. Ass's liver, with a little panaces mixed in, dropped into the mouth, protects infants from epilepsy and other diseases; they direct that this be done for 40 days. An ass's skin thrown over infants also makes them fearless. The teeth that horses shed first, tied on to infants, make teething easy; more effectively if they have not touched the ground.

259| Ox spleen in honey is both given and applied for pains of the spleen; calf's spleen with honey soothes running ulcers, and boiled down in wine, pounded and applied, it heals small ulcers of the mouth. The Magi drop into the mouths of infants, before they are given milk, a goat's brain drawn through a gold ring, against epilepsy and the other diseases of infants. Goat's dung tied on in a cloth calms restless infants, especially girls. Gums rubbed with goat's milk or with hare's brain make teething easy.

260| Cato believed that eating hare brought sleep, and the common people believe that it gives the body charm for 9 days — a frivolous jest, to be sure, yet one that must have some reason under it, given so strong a conviction. The Magi say that sleep is induced by the gall of a she-goat — provided she has been sacrificed — smeared on the eyes or put beneath the pillow. — Ash of goat's horn in myrtle oil, rubbed on, checks sweating.

261| Sexual desire is stimulated by boar's gall applied, also by pig's marrow swallowed, and by ass's tallow applied with the fat of a male goose mixed in; likewise by the discharge after a horse's coupling, which Virgil too describes, and by a stallion's testicles dried so that they can be ground into a drink, or by the right testicle of an ass drunk in wine or a portion of it tied on in a bracelet; and by the foam of the same animal after coupling, collected on a red cloth and shut up in silver, as Osthanes reports.

262| Salpe directs that this member be plunged seven times into boiling oil and the parts concerned be rubbed with it; Dalion, that the ash from it be drunk, or the urine of a bull after coupling, and that the pubes be smeared with the mud itself. But on the contrary, men's desire is checked by bull's dung applied. — Drunkenness is prevented by the roasted lung of a boar or of a pig, taken as food on an empty stomach that day, and likewise by that of a kid.

263| Marvels are reported besides about these same animals: that if anyone picks up the shoe that a horse casts from its hoof, as commonly happens, and puts it away, it is a remedy for hiccups to those who remember where they put it; that the liver of wolves is like a horse's hoof; that horses burst if they follow the tracks of wolves with a rider on their back; that there is a certain power of discord in the knucklebones of pigs; that in fires, if some of the dung is carried out of the stalls, sheep and cattle are more easily drawn out and do not run back in;

264| that the flesh of he-goats does not smell rank if on the day they are killed they have eaten barley bread or drunk diluted laser, and that no meats feel the teredo if they are hardened with salt while the moon is waning. Indeed, so far has nothing been left out that we find that a deaf hare fattens faster. And as for the remedies of animals:

265| if blood flows from draught animals, pig's dung in wine is to be poured in; for the diseases of cattle, suet, native sulphur, wild garlic and a raw egg, pounded, are to be given in wine, or fox fat; horse flesh boiled down cures the diseases of pigs when given as a drink, and for the diseases of all quadrupeds a whole she-goat with its hide and a rubeta frog boiled down; cocks are not touched by foxes if they have eaten that animal's liver, dried, or if they have mated wearing on their neck a strip of its skin; and the same is true of the gall of the weasel;

266| cattle in Cyprus cure themselves of griping pains with human excrement; the hooves of cattle are not worn down if the base of their horns is first smeared with liquid pitch; wolves do not come into a field if one is caught, its feet are broken and a knife driven into it, and its blood is sprinkled little by little round the boundaries of the field, and the wolf itself is buried at the spot from which it began to be dragged; or if the ploughshare

267| with which the first furrow of that year was drawn in the field is knocked off the plough and burnt on the hearth of the Lares where the household gathers, no wolf will harm any animal in that field as long as this is done. From here we shall next turn to the animals of their own kind, those that are either not gentle or are wild.

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