Pliny the Younger & Pliny the Elder · a new plain-English translation from the Latin
1| The nature of the remedies, and the great number of those still to come and already past, compel me to say more about the art of medicine itself, although I am well aware that no one has treated these matters in the Latin tongue before, and that the beginning of every new subject is uncertain and slippery, above all one so barren of charm and so difficult to set forth.
2| But it is likely that a question occurs to the mind of all who come to know these things: how it has come about that remedies which were already at hand and suited to their purpose have fallen out of use in medicine. And at once the strange and shameful thought arises that no art has been more inconstant, or is even now changed more often, although none is more profitable. At first it assigned its discoverers to the gods and consecrated them to heaven,
3| and even today medicine is in many ways sought from oracles. Then it increased its fame even by a crime, telling the tale that Aesculapius was struck by a thunderbolt because he had brought Tyndareus back to life — and yet it did not stop relating that others had come back to life through its work. It was famous in Trojan times, from which tradition is more certain, but only for its remedies for wounds.
4| Its subsequent history, wonderful to relate, lay hidden in the densest night right up to the Peloponnesian War. Then Hippocrates brought it back into the light, born on the island of Cos, an island especially famous and powerful and dedicated to Aesculapius. It had been the custom for those freed from diseases to write up in the temple of that god what had helped them, so that later a similar case might profit by it; Hippocrates is said to have copied these records out and, as our Varro believes, after the temple had been burnt, to have founded with them the kind of medicine called clinice. Nor was there afterwards any limit to the money-making, since Prodicus, a native of Selymbria and one of his pupils, founded what they call iatraliptice, and found a source of revenue even for the physicians' anointers and their lowliest drudges.
5| Their doctrines Chrysippus changed with enormous verbosity, and Chrysippus' own were changed in very great part by his pupil Erasistratus, who was the son of a daughter of Aristotle. For curing King Antiochus he was presented with a hundred talents by King Ptolemy, his son — so that we may begin to show the rewards of the art as well. Another faction, which named itself empirice from its reliance on experience, began in Sicily, with Acron of Acragas, who was commended by the authority of the natural philosopher Empedocles;
6| and these schools quarrelled, and Herophilus condemned them all, setting out the beat of the pulse in musical metres according to the stages of life. Then this sect too was abandoned, since in it one had to be able to read; changed too was the one which Asclepiades, as we have related, had later devised. His pupil was Themison, who at first enrolled himself as his follower, but soon, as his life went on, changed his own doctrines too; and those in turn Antonius Musa changed, on the authority of the deified Augustus, whom he had rescued from grave danger by the opposite treatment.
7| I pass over many physicians, and the most celebrated among them, the Cassii, the Carpetani, the Arruntii and the Rubrii. Their annual fees from the emperors were 250,000 sesterces. Quintus Stertinius made it a favour to the emperors that he was content with five hundred thousand sesterces a year, for he showed, by listing the houses, that his practice in the city had brought him six hundred thousand.
8| An equal fee was lavished on his brother by Claudius Caesar, and their fortunes, although drained by the public works with which they adorned Naples, left to their heir 300,000 sesterces, as much as Arruntius alone left in the same period. Then arose Vettius Valens, made notorious by his adultery with Messalina, wife of Claudius Caesar, and having gained followers as much of his eloquence as of his power, he founded a new sect.
9| The same age, under Nero's principate, leapt across to Thessalus, who swept away all doctrines and ranted against the physicians of every age with a sort of frenzy; with what wisdom and talent, can be judged amply from a single proof: on his monument, which is on the Appian Way, he had himself inscribed as iatronices, Conqueror of Physicians. No actor and no charioteer of the three-horse races went out in public with a larger retinue — until Crinas of Massilia, joining two arts together so as to seem more cautious and more devout, surpassed him in authority, giving food according to the movements of the stars from an astrological almanac and observing the hours; and he recently left C sesterces, after building the walls of his native city and other fortifications at an expense hardly smaller.
10| These men were ruling our destinies when suddenly Charmis, from the same Massilia, invaded the city, condemning not only the earlier physicians but hot baths as well, and he persuaded people to bathe in cold water even in the frosts of winter. He plunged the sick into pools. We used to see old men of consular rank stiff with cold, for show; on which subject there is even the corroborating testimony of Annaeus Seneca.
11| Nor is there any doubt that all these men, hunting for fame by some novelty or other, at once make a trade of our lives. Hence those wretched wrangles of opinion around the sick, with no one agreeing with another, lest he seem an appendage of someone else. Hence that inscription on an unlucky monument: that he died of a crowd of doctors. The art changes every day, refurbished so many times, and we are driven along by the wind of Greek cleverness; and it is plain that whichever of these men is powerful in talking becomes at once the commander of our life and death — as though thousands of nations did not live without physicians, though not without medicine, as the Roman people did for more than six hundred years, a people not itself slow to accept the arts, and indeed even greedy for medicine, until, having tried it, it condemned it.
12| Indeed, it is fitting to review the notable facts about our forefathers in these customs. Cassius Hemina, one of the most ancient authorities, states that the first physician to come to Rome was Archagathus son of Lysanias, from the Peloponnese, in the consulship of Lucius Aemilius and Marcus Livius, in the year of the City 535; that he was granted the rights of a citizen, and that a shop at the Acilian crossroads was bought for him at public expense for that purpose.
13| that he was an outstanding healer of wounds, and that his arrival was at first wonderfully welcome, but soon, from his savagery in cutting and cauterizing, his name changed to "executioner" and brought the art and all physicians into loathing. This can be understood most clearly from Marcus Cato, to whose authority a triumph and a censorship add least; so much more is in the man himself. For this reason we shall set down his own words:
14| I shall speak of those Greeks in their proper place, my son Marcus, and of what I have found out at Athens, and that it is good to look into their writings, not to learn them thoroughly. I shall prove their race to be utterly worthless and untaught, and take it that a prophet has said this: whenever that people gives us its writings, it will corrupt everything, and all the more if it sends its physicians here. They have sworn among themselves to kill all barbarians with medicine, but they do this very thing for a fee, so that they may be trusted and destroy us easily. They call us too barbarians, and defile us more foully than others with the name of "Opicans" (opikon). I have forbidden you the physicians.
15| And yet this Cato died in the six hundred and fifth year of our city, in his eighty-fifth, so that no one may suppose that he lacked either public occasions or private stretches of life for putting things to the test. What then? Do we believe that a most useful thing was condemned by him? By Hercules, not at all. For he adds by what medicine he brought himself and his wife to a long old age, namely with these very things which we are now handling, and he declares that he has a notebook with which he treats his son, his slaves and his household, which we are arranging by the kinds of its use.
16| The ancients condemned not the thing but the art, and above all they refused that a profit should be made by charging a fee for life. Hence it is reported that they built the temple of Aesculapius, even when that god was being received, outside the city, and again on an island, and that when they were driving the Greeks out of Italy, long even after Cato, they made an exception of physicians.
17| I shall add to their foresight. This is the only one of the Greek arts which Roman seriousness does not yet practise; despite such great profit very few of the Quirites have taken it up, and they themselves at once go over as deserters to the Greeks; indeed even among the unskilled and those without the language, authority belongs to no one who treats it otherwise than in Greek, and they trust less what pertains to their own health if they understand it. And so, by Hercules, in this art alone it happens that anyone who has declared himself a physician is believed at once, though in no falsehood is the danger greater.
18| Yet we do not look at that; so winning is the sweetness of hoping, for each man, on his own behalf. Besides, there is no law to punish deadly ignorance, no example of vengeance. They learn from our perils and conduct their experiments through our deaths, and only a physician may kill a man with complete impunity. Indeed, the reproach is shifted elsewhere and the blame is laid on intemperance, and those who have perished are even accused. But the panels of jurors are examined by the emperors' censorships as the custom is, inquiry is made through the very walls, and the man who is to judge about a coin is summoned from Gades and the Pillars of Hercules, while for a case of exile the voting tablet is given only to 45 chosen men:
19| yet in the case of the judge himself, what sort of men go into consultation, ready to kill him on the spot! Deservedly so, since none of us wishes to know what is needed for his own health. We walk on other men's feet, we recognize with other men's eyes, we greet by other men's memory, we live by other men's labour too, and the values of nature and the proofs of life have perished. We have nothing of our own but our luxuries.
20| I shall not abandon Cato, whom I have exposed to the ill will of so self-seeking an art, nor that senate which so decided, and this not on accusations seized against the art, as someone may have expected. For what is more fertile in poisons, or from what source more plots about wills? And then there are the adulteries, even in the houses of emperors, as of Eudemus with Livia, wife of Drusus Caesar, and of Valens likewise with the queen of whom we have spoken.
21| Let these be not faults of the art but of men: Cato feared these things for the city no more, as I at least believe, than he feared queens. I shall not even charge avarice, nor the grasping markets held while fates hang in the balance, the pricing of pain and the pledge of death, or the secrets of the precept, that a film in the eyes is better pushed aside than drawn out. By these means it has come about that nothing seemed more in keeping with the facts than the multitude of those who prowl about; for it is not shame but rivals that bring down the fees.
22| It is well known that by the same Charmis one sick man from the provinces was contracted for at 200,000 sesterces, and that the emperor Claudius took away from Alcon, a physician of wounds, condemned, 10,000,000 sesterces, and that the same man, going into exile in Gaul and then restored, acquired not less within a few years. Let these be charged to the persons.
23| Let us not even accuse the dregs of the art or its shameful ignorance, but the intemperance of the leading men themselves, with their immoderate byways of hot waters, their domineering fasting, and the food, more than once in a day, crammed into the same men when they are failing, besides a thousand ways of repentance, the very precepts of kitchens and mixtures of perfumes, since they have omitted no enticement of life.
24| I should indeed believe that the importing of foreign wares and the establishing of outlandish prices displeased our ancestors, yet Cato did not foresee this when he condemned the art. What is called theriace is a composition devised by luxury, fashioned from six hundred things, though nature has given so many remedies each of which alone would suffice. The Mithridatic antidote is composed of 54 ingredients, no two in equal weight, and of some of them one sixtieth of one denarius is prescribed. Which of the gods, by Faith, showed this!
25| For human subtlety could not have been so great; it is plainly a display of the art and a monstrous peddling of knowledge. And they themselves do not know those things; it has been found that commonly, in place of Indian cinnabaris, minium is added to medicines through ignorance of the name, which we shall show to be a poison among the pigments.
26| But these things concern the health of individuals; whereas what Cato feared and foresaw is far more innocent and slight in the thinking, things which the leaders of that art themselves confess about themselves; these things have ruined the customs of the empire: those which we, being sound, endure: wrestling bouts, ceromata set up as though for the sake of health, scorching baths in which they have persuaded people that food is cooked in the body, so that everyone comes out less strong, and the most obedient are carried out; then drinking on an empty stomach and vomitings, and drinking again, and the unmanning of the hair, introduced with their resins, and likewise the pubic parts of women, at any rate, laid open to public view.
27| So it is indeed: a plague of morals, and from no other source greater than medicine, makes Cato every day a prophet and an oracle outright: it is enough to look into the intellects of the Greeks, not to learn them thoroughly.
28| This had to be said on behalf of that senate and the six hundred years of the Roman people, against an art in which, in a most treacherous condition, good men give authority to the worst, and at the same time against the stunned persuasions of certain people who think nothing helps unless it is costly. And I should not doubt that someone will find the creatures about to be mentioned disgusting; yet it was no disgrace to Virgil to name ants without any necessity, and weevils, and the nests of the light-shunning cockroaches heaped together, nor to Homer to describe the impudence of a fly amid the battles of the gods, nor to nature to produce these things, since she produces man. Let each man therefore weigh the causes and effects, not the things.
29| We shall begin with the acknowledged remedies, that is with wool and sheep, so that to the chief things honour may be rendered first. Some things will necessarily be said even so in places not their own, though in passing. Nor would the material for display be lacking, if it were permitted to look to anything other than the credibility of the work, since among the first things, medicines are reported even from the ash and nest of the phoenix, as if that were certain and not fabulous. It is mockery to show to life remedies that will return after a thousandth year.
30| The ancient Romans held wool in an authority that was even religious, ordering that the doorposts be touched with it by brides; and besides clothing and protection against cold, greasy wool provides very many remedies, with oil and wine or vinegar, according as each thing needs to be soothed or to bite, to bind or to loosen, applied to dislocated limbs and aching sinews and often drenched. Some also mix salt in for dislocations; others apply with the wool pounded rue and fat, likewise to bruises and swellings.
31| It is also reported to make the breath of the mouth more pleasant, when it is rubbed on the teeth and gums with honey mixed in. It helps also the frenzied by fumigation. It stops blood in the nostrils when put in with oil of roses, and in another way, thicker, with the ears stopped. It is also laid with honey on old ulcers. It heals wounds, with wine or vinegar or cold water and oil pressed out of it.
32| Fleeces of a ram, washed in cold water and soaked in oil, quiet inflammations of the womb in women's ailments, and if it prolapses, repress it by fumigation. Greasy wool laid on and placed beneath calls out dead births; it also stops their flows. And bound over the bites of a mad dog, it is loosed after the seventh day. It heals hangnails with cold water. The same, dyed in natron, sulphur, oil, vinegar and boiling liquid pitch, laid on as hot as possible twice a day, quiets pains of the loins. And it stops bleeding when greasy wool from a ram is bound about the joints of the extremities.
33| All wool from the neck is the most highly praised, and by country the Galatian, Tarentine, Attic and Milesian. They lay on greasy wool for scaly and bruised parts, for livid places, blows, crushings, rubbings and falls, for headaches and other pains, and for inflammation of the stomach in vinegar and oil of roses. Its ash is smeared on chafed, wounded and burned places. It is also added to eye medicines, likewise to fistulas and to suppurating ears.
34| For this purpose some dry it after shearing, others after plucking, with the topmost parts cut off, and tease it and pack it in a raw earthen pot and pour honey over it and burn it. Others put splinters of pine-torch beneath, with oil sprinkled between from time to time, and set it alight, and rub the ash in small basins with water added, by hand, and let it settle, changing the water often, until it gently binds the tongue and does not bite; then they lay the ash away. Its power is corrosive, and it cleanses the eyelids most effectively.
35| Indeed the very filth of the flocks, and the sweat of the thighs and armpits that clings to the wool, which they call oesypum, has almost countless uses. The palm goes to that produced from Attic sheep. It is made in several ways, but the most approved is from wool freshly plucked from those parts, or from any greasy filth first collected, warmed gently over a slow fire in a bronze vessel and cooled, and the fat that floats on top gathered into an earthen vessel and boiled again with the former matter; each fat is washed in cold water and strained in a linen cloth and baked in the sun until it becomes white and translucent; then it is stored in a tin box.
36| The test is that it smells of the rank odour of the filth, and when rubbed by hand with water it does not dissolve but turns white like white lead. It is most useful for the eyes against inflammations and callus of the eyelids. Some bake it in a potsherd until it loses its fat, thinking such more useful for eroded and hardened eyelids, for scabby corners, and for watering eyes.
37| It heals ulcers not of the eyes only but of the mouth also and of the genitals, with goose fat. It treats inflammations of the womb, fissures of the seat, and condylomata, with melilot and butter. Its other uses we shall set out later. The filth of the tails, too, caked into little balls, dried, by itself, pounded to meal and rubbed on the teeth, is wonderfully beneficial, even to loose ones, and to the gums if a cancer is creeping in them;
38| and clean fleeces applied by themselves, or with sulphur taken up, are good for hidden pains, and their ash for defects of the genitals; and they are so powerful that they are even laid over medicines. They help above all the flock itself, if the sheep refuse to feed from disgust. For when the tail is tied as tightly as possible and the wool is plucked from it, they feed at once, and they say that the part of the tail beyond the knot dies off first.
39| Wool also has an affinity with eggs: laid together on the forehead they are used against rheums of the eyes. In this use it is not necessary for the wool to have been treated with radicula, nor for anything other than the white of an egg to be poured on, and fine meal of frankincense. Eggs by themselves, with the white poured in, check rheums of the eyes and cool burning ones (some prefer it with saffron), and they are mixed in place of water into eye-salves; for infants against running eyes they are, as hardly anything else is, a remedy, with fresh butter mixed in.
40| The same, ground with oil, soothe erysipelas with beet leaves bound over. With the white of eggs the lashes are bent back in the eyes, with Hammoniacum ground and mixed in, and pimples in the face with pine kernels and a little honey. The face itself, smeared, is not burned by the sun. Parts burned by hot water do not feel pustules if they are covered at once with egg (some mix in barley meal and a little salt); and for sores from burns, toasted barley with egg white and pig fat is wonderfully beneficial.
41| The same treatment is used for defects of the seat, and for infants even if anything prolapses there; for cracks of the feet, the white of eggs boiled with 2 denarii in weight of white lead, an equal weight of foam of silver, a little myrrh, then wine; for erysipelas, the white of three eggs with starch. They say too that wounds are glued by the white, and stones expelled.
42| The yolks of eggs, cooked until they harden, with a moderate amount of saffron mixed in, or honey, smeared on with woman's milk, mitigate pains of the eyes; or wool laid on the eyes with oil of roses and honeyed wine; or smeared on with ground celery seed and barley groats in honeyed wine. It helps also those who cough, the yolk swallowed liquid by itself in such a way that the teeth do not touch it, for rheums of the chest and roughness of the throat. Specially, against haemorrhois snakes, it is smeared on the bite and sipped raw.
43| It helps also the kidneys, and gnawings and ulcerations of the bladder. For those spitting blood, 5 yolks of eggs are sipped raw in a hemina of wine; for dysentery, with the ash of their own shell and poppy juice and wine. They are given to coeliacs with an equal weight of fat raisins and of pomegranate rind for three days in equal portions; and in another way, 3 yolks of eggs, a quadrans each of old lard and of honey, 3 cyathi of old wine, ground to the thickness of honey, and,
44| when it is needed, drunk in water the size of a hazelnut; likewise three fried in oil, the whole eggs having been steeped the day before in vinegar; so too for lientery, and for those bringing up blood, with 3 cyathi of must. The same are used for livid bruises, if they are of longer standing, with bulbs and honey. Cooked and drunk in wine they stop women's monthly flow; raw with oil and wine they treat inflations of the womb when smeared on.
45| They are useful also for pains of the neck, with goose fat and oil of roses, and for defects of the seat, hardened in the fire so that they help by heat as well, and for condylomata with oil of roses; likewise for burns, hardened in water, then in embers with the shells burned away, and then the yolks are smeared on with oil of roses. Whole yolks are also made, which they call sitista, when after three days of incubation they are taken out. Chicks in eggs strengthen a relaxed stomach, with half an oak gall, provided that no other food is taken for 2 hours. They give also to dysenteric patients chicks boiled in the very egg, with a hemina of harsh wine mixed in and the same measure of oil and barley groats.
46| The membrane stripped from the shell, whether the egg is raw or cooked, treats fissures of the lips; the ash of the shell drunk in wine treats eruptions of blood. It should be burned without the membrane. Tooth powder is made in this way too. The same ash, smeared on with myrrh, stops women's monthly flow. The firmness of shells is so great that, held upright, they are broken by no force or weight, unless they are bent a little out of their roundness.
47| Whole eggs help birth, drunk in wine with rue and dill and cumin. They remove itch and pruritus of the body when mixed with oil and cedria, and moist ulcers on the head when cyclaminus is mixed in. For spitting of pus and blood, a raw egg is swallowed, warmed, with the juice of cut leek and an equal measure of Greek honey. Eggs are also given to those who cough, cooked and ground with honey, or raw with raisin wine and an equal measure of oil. Single eggs are also poured in for defects of virility, each with half an ounce of starch and three cyathi of raisin wine, after the baths; against the strikes of serpents they are smeared on cooked and ground, with cress added.
48| In how many ways they help as food is well known, since they pass through swellings of the throat and as they go warm it by their heat. There is no other food that nourishes in sickness without burdening, and has at once the force of drink and of food.
49| We have said that the shell of eggs steeped in vinegar is softened; worked with flour into a loaf, such eggs restore coeliacs. Some think it more useful to roast them thus dissolved in pans, in which way they check not only the bowels but also the monthly flow of women; or, if the force of the flux is greater, they are swallowed raw with flour and water. By themselves, the yolks of these are boiled in vinegar until they harden, and again roasted with ground pepper to check the bowels.
50| A singular remedy is made also for dysenteric patients: an egg poured out into a new earthen vessel, and of the same egg's measure, so that all are equal, honey, then vinegar, and oil, poured together and often stirred; the better these are, the more immediate the remedy will be. Others add, in the same measure in place of the oil and vinegar, red resin and wine; and they mix in another way, an equal measure of oil only, with 2 sixtieths of a denarius of pine bark, with one of that which we called rhum, and 5 obols of honey boiled together, so that other food is taken after 4 hours. Many also treat gripings with two eggs, ground together with 4 heads of garlic, and a hemina of wine warmed, and so given as a drink.
51| And so that nothing may be wanting to the credit of eggs, the white of them mixed with quicklime glues together fragments of glass; and their power is so great that wood drenched with egg does not burn, nor even is a garment burned that has been touched with it. We have spoken only of the eggs of hens, though those of other birds remain, of great usefulness, as we shall say in their places.
52| There is, besides, a kind of egg in great repute in the Gauls, passed over by the Greeks. For snakes, coiled together in great numbers, gather it into a ball with the saliva of their throats and the foam of their bodies, in a skilful embrace; it is called the urinum. The Druids say it is tossed up into the air with hissings and must be caught in a cloak so that it does not touch the ground; that the one who seizes it flees on horseback, for the serpents pursue him until they are stopped by the intervening of some river; that the test of it is if it floats against the water, even when bound in gold;
53| and, as is the cleverness of the Magi in hiding their frauds, they judge it must be taken at a certain moon, as if it were for human decision that this operation of the serpents should coincide. I have myself seen that egg, the size of a moderate round apple, its shell cartilaginous and marked, as though with the sucker-cups of the arms of a polyp, with many pits.
54| It is wonderfully praised by the Druids for winning lawsuits and for access to kings, a vanity so great that, to my knowledge, a Roman knight from the Vocontii was put to death by the deified Claudius for no other reason than that he had it in his bosom during a lawsuit. Yet this embrace of snakes and their fruitful concord seems to be the reason why foreign peoples made the caduceus, with the figure of snakes wound about it, among the tokens of peace; for it is not the custom for them to be crested on the caduceus.
55| Of goose eggs, which are of great utility, and of the goose itself, we shall speak in this volume; and we owe honour to the Commagenum, a most famous preparation. It is made from goose fat (otherwise of the most celebrated use, but for this purpose in Commagene, a part of Syria) with cinnamum, casia, white pepper, and the herb called Commagene, the vessels buried in snow; it has a pleasant smell and is most useful for chills, convulsions, hidden or sudden pains, and everything that is treated with acopa; it is at once an ointment and a medicine.
56| It is also made in Syria in another way, with bird fat prepared as we shall say, with erysisceptrum, xylobalsamum and phoenix added, and ground calamus, of each the weight of the fat, warmed in wine two or three times. It is made in winter, since in summer it does not congeal unless wax is added. There are besides many remedies from the goose, which I wonder at as much as in the case of goats, for the goose and the raven are said to be afflicted by disease from summer into autumn.
57| Of the honour of geese, which they earned by detecting the Gauls' ascent to the Capitol, we have spoken. For the same reason dogs pay an annual penalty, fixed alive by the shoulder on a fork of elder wood, in the space between the shrine of Juventas and that of Summanus. But the customs of the ancients compel more to be said about this animal.
58| They considered suckling puppies so pure for food that they used them even in appeasing the divine powers in place of victims. A sacrifice is made to Genita Mana with a puppy, and puppy meat is even now placed at the dinners of the gods. That it was celebrated at inaugural banquets is shown by the plays of Plautus. They think nothing more outstanding than dog's blood against poisons; this animal seems also to have shown man vomiting, and other uses wonderfully praised from it we shall report in their places. Now we shall go on in the order undertaken.
59| Against the strikes of serpents the following are held effective: the fresh dung of a sheep boiled in wine and smeared on, and mice cut open and laid on. Their nature is not to be despised, especially in sympathy with the stars, as we have said, the number of their fibres growing and decreasing with the light of the moon. The Magi report that if a mouse's liver is given to pigs in a fig, the animal follows the one who gave it, and that it works likewise in man, but that the effect is undone by a cyathus of oil drunk.
60| Of weasels there are two kinds; one wild, differing in size, which the Greeks call ictides. The gall of these is said to be effective against asps, in other respects a poison. But that which wanders in our houses, and, as Cicero attests, every day carries its young across and changes its dwelling, pursues serpents. The weight of a denarius of it, preserved in salt, is given in 3 cyathi to those who have been struck; or its stomach stuffed with coriander and preserved and drunk in wine, and a weasel's young even more effectively.
61| Some things shameful to tell are recommended with such assurance by the authors that it is not right to pass them over, since the harmony or conflict of things gives rise to medicines; for example, the nature of bedbugs, a most foul creature, disgusting even to mention, is said to avail against the bites of serpents and especially of asps, and likewise against all poisons, the proof being that, they say, hens are not killed by an asp on the day when they have eaten them, and the flesh of these is of the greatest help to those who have been struck. Of the things they report,
62| the most humane is to smear them on bites with the blood of a tortoise, and likewise, by fumigation with them, to drive off leeches that cling, and to kill those that animals have swallowed, by giving the bugs to them in drink. Some, however, even anoint the eyes with them ground with salt and woman's milk, and the ears with honey and oil of roses mixed in. Those which are wild and born in mallow, burnt, with the ash mixed with oil of roses, they pour into the ears.
63| The rest that they report about them, remedies for vomitings and quartan fevers and other diseases, though they hold that they should be swallowed enclosed in egg or wax or a bean, I judge false and not to be repeated. For lethargy alone they use them as medicine, with a reason, since the soporific force of asps is overcome, giving seven in a cyathus of water, four for the years of boyhood.
64| And in strangury they have put them into a tube. So true is it that that parent of all things has produced nothing without vast reasons. They have also reported that two tied on the left arm in wool stolen from shepherds resist night fevers, and day fevers in a reddish cloth. Against these, however, the scolopendra is hostile, and kills them by fumigation.
65| Asps kill those they strike by torpor and sleep, the least curable of all serpents. But their venom, if it has touched blood or a fresh wound, kills at once; if an old ulcer, more slowly. For the rest, drunk in any amount it does no harm, for it has no wasting force; and so animals killed by their bite are harmless as food. I would hesitate to put forward a remedy from them, had not Marcus Varro, in the 83rd year of his life, reported that the strokes of asps are most effectively cured when the struck drink their own urine.
66| Of the basilisk, which even the serpents themselves flee, killing others by smell, and which is said to kill a man if it merely looks at him, the Magi celebrate the blood with wonderful praises: congealing, it is like pitch in manner and colour, and diluted it becomes brighter than cinnabaris. They attribute to it success in petitions to the powers, and even to the gods in prayers, remedies for diseases, and amulets against poisonings. Some even call it the blood of Saturn.
67| The dragon has no venoms. Its head, set beneath the threshold of doors, with the gods propitiated by adoration, is promised to make the house fortunate; its eyes, aged and ground with honey, to make those anointed with them not shrink in fear from night apparitions even if they are timid; the fat of its heart, in the skin of a gazelle, tied to the upper arm with the sinews of a stag, to confer very much victory in lawsuits; the vertebra, to soothe access to the powers; its teeth, tied in the skins of roe deer with stag sinews, to render masters mild and the powerful open to entreaty.
68| But above all there is the compound by which the lies of the Magi make people invincible: the tail and head of a dragon, hairs from a lion's forehead and the marrow of the same, the foam of a victorious horse, and a dog's claw, bound on with deer hide and the sinews of a stag and a gazelle alternately. It will matter as much to have refuted these as to have shown remedies against serpents, since these too are their poisonings. Poisonous creatures flee dragon fat, and also, if it is burned, that of ichneumons; they flee too those anointed with nettles ground in vinegar.
69| A viper's head laid on, even one other than that which has struck, helps without limit, as does it if someone holds the viper itself up on a staff in the steam (for they say it recants), likewise if someone smears on the ash of the same, burned. That the serpent returns to the one it struck, by necessity of nature, is attested by Nigidius. Some cut open the head skilfully between the ears to take out a little stone, which they say it swallows when frightened; others use the entire head.
70| From the viper are made pastilles, called theriaci by the Greeks: three finger-breadths are cut off at each end, the entrails are taken out together with the livid part adhering to the spine, the rest of the body is boiled thoroughly in a pan with water and dill, the spines are removed, fine flour is added, and the pastilles are dried in the shade; they use them in many medicines. It should be noted that this is made from the viper only. Some, when it has been cleaned as said above, boil down its fat with a sextarius of oil to the half; from this, when needed, three drops added to oil are used for anointing, so that all beasts flee those anointed.
71| It is established besides that against the stings of all, even incurable ones, the entrails of the serpents themselves, applied, help, and that those who have once swallowed a viper's liver, cooked, are never afterwards struck by a serpent. Nor is the snake venomous except through the month when stirred by the moon, and it helps when seized alive and crushed in water, if the bites are bathed in this way.
72| Indeed many remedies are believed to be in it, as we shall set out, and for that reason it is said to be dedicated to Aesculapius. Democritus even devises certain marvels from them, such that the speech of birds can be understood. The snake of Aesculapius was brought from Epidaurus to Rome and is commonly kept even in houses, and unless their seed were burned out by fires, there would be no resisting their fecundity in the world. The most beautiful kind of snake is that which lives also in water; they are called hydri, inferior to no serpent in venom. The liver of these, kept, is [against] a help to one struck by them.
73| A scorpion, ground up, is an antidote to the venom of stelliones. For from stelliones a bad drug is made; when one has died in wine, it covers the face of those who drink with freckles. For this reason those who plot against the beauty of their rivals kill it in an ointment. The remedy is the yolk of an egg, with honey and natron. The gall of stelliones, ground in water, is said to gather weasels together.
74| Among all venomous creatures the salamander's crime is the greatest. For the others strike individuals and do not kill several at once, to say nothing of the fact that they are said to perish from conscience when they have struck a man and to be received no more by the Earth; but the salamander can kill whole peoples together, unawares. For if it has crept up a tree, it taints all the fruit with venom and kills those who eat it by a chilling force, no different from aconitum;
75| indeed if a crust of bread is laid on wood or stone that it has touched, the poisoning is the same, or if it falls into a well, since if its saliva is sprinkled on any part of the body, even the lowest part of the foot, all the hair falls off over the whole body. Yet a venom of such kind and such magnitude is eaten by some animals, such as pigs, the same opposition of things prevailing.
76| It is likely that its venom is extinguished first of all by those that feed on it, and of the things that are reported, by a drink of cantharides or a lizard taken in food. Other antagonists we have named and shall name in their places. As for what the Magi report from it against fires, since it alone of animals extinguishes flames, if it were true Rome would have tried it by now. Sextius reports that love is kindled by eating them, if, with the entrails and feet and head removed, they are kept in honey, and denies that fire is put out by them.
77| Of birds the vulture is the first in aid against serpents, and it has been noted that the black ones have less power. They say that serpents are driven off by the smell of feathers from its wings, if they are burned, and that those who have the heart of that bird are safe from the attack not only of serpents but also of wild beasts and robbers and the anger of kings.
78| The venoms of serpents are overcome by the flesh of chickens laid on as soon as it is torn off, while still warm, and likewise by the brain drunk in wine. The Parthians prefer to lay the brain of a hen on the wounds. Broth of them drunk also treats excellently, and is wonderful in many other uses. Panthers and lions do not touch those anointed with it, especially if garlic has been boiled in.
79| It loosens the bowels more strongly if from an old cock, and helps also against long fevers and numb and trembling limbs and joint diseases and headaches, rheums, inflations, loss of appetite, beginning tenesmus, and is good for the liver, kidneys, bladder, against indigestions, and shortness of breath.
80| And so rules even exist for making it: it is more effective boiled with sea-cabbage or cybium or caper or celery or the herb Mercurialis, polypody or dill, but most usefully in 3 congii of water boiled down to 3 heminae with the above-named herbs, and given cooled in the open air, more suitably with vomiting beforehand. I shall not pass by a marvel, though it does not belong to medicine: if the limbs of hens are mixed into melting gold, they consume it into themselves; so this is the venom of gold. And cocks themselves do not crow if a ring of filings is put around the neck.
81| Against serpents the flesh of doves, freshly torn up, also helps, and that of swallows, and the feet of an owl burned with the herb plumbago. Nor shall I omit in this bird too an example of magical vanity; for besides the other portentous lies they report that its heart, laid on the left breast of a sleeping woman, makes her declare all her secrets; and that those who carry it into battle become braver.
82| They also show remedies from its egg for the hair. For who, I ask, could ever have seen an owl's egg, when to have seen the bird itself is a prodigy? Who, at all events, could have tried it, and especially on the hair? They even promise that the blood of an owl's chick curls the hair.
83| Of nearly the same kind may seem what they report also about the bat: if it is carried three times around a house alive and fastened above the window head downwards, it is an amulet, and specially for sheepfolds, carried around as many times and hung by the feet over the threshold. Its blood too, with thistle, they praise among the first remedies against the strikes of serpents.
84| The phalangium is unknown in Italy and has several kinds: one similar to an ant but much larger, with a red head, the rest of the body black, with white spots. Its sting is sharper than a wasp's. It lives chiefly around ovens and mills. It is a remedy if one shows the struck person another of the same kind, and for this purpose dead ones are kept. Their shells are also found, which, ground and drunk, cure; the young of a weasel as above.
85| The Greeks equally call phalangion one among the kinds of spiders, but distinguish it with the name of wolf. A third kind, with the same name of phalangium, is a downy spider with a very large head, in which, when it is cut open, two little worms are said to be found, and tied on women in deerskin before sunrise they prevent conception, as Caecilius left in his commentaries. This power lasts a year. This alone out of every atocion it is permissible to have mentioned, since the fecundity of some women, full of children, needs such an indulgence.
86| There is also one called rhox, like a black grape-berry, with a very small mouth under the belly and very short feet, as though incomplete. The pain from its bite is like that from a scorpion, and the urine is like spiders' webs. The asterion would be the same, were it not marked with white streaks; its bite makes the knees give way. Worse than either is the blue one, with black down, which brings on dimness of sight and cobwebby vomitings. Worse still is one that differs from a hornet only in its wing; this one also brings on wasting.
87| The myrmecion, like an ant in the head, with a black belly marked by white spots, torments with the pain of wasps. The tetragnathion has two kinds: the worse is marked in the middle of the head by a white line and by another crosswise; this one causes swelling of the mouth. But the grey one, whitish in its hinder part, is slower, and least harmful of all is that of the same colour which spreads its webs for flies very widely on walls.
88| Against the bites of all there is a remedy in the brain of a chicken drunk in posca with a little pepper, likewise 5 ants drunk, the ash of the dung of flocks smeared on in vinegar, and spiders themselves, any of them, rotted in oil. The bite of a shrew is cured by the rennet of a lamb drunk in wine, by the ash of a ram's hoof with honey, and by a weasel's young as was said under serpents. If it has bitten beasts of burden, a fresh mouse is applied with salt, or a bat's gall in vinegar.
89| And the shrew itself is a remedy against itself when torn apart and laid on. For if a pregnant one has bitten, it bursts apart at once. It is best if the very one that bit is laid on, but they keep others too for this use, coated in oil or clay. There is also a remedy against its bite in earth from a wheel-rut; for they say the rut is not crossed by it, through a certain torpor of its nature.
90| The stellio is said to be the most opposed to scorpions in turn, so that by its very sight it brings them terror and a torpor of cold sweat. And so they rot it in oil and anoint the wounds with it. Some boil down foam of silver in that oil to a kind of plaster and so smear it on. The Greeks call this animal colotes, ascalabotes and galeotes; in Italy it is not born. For it is full of spots, of a sharp squeak, and feeds on spiders, all of which is foreign to our stelliones.
91| It helps also to apply the ash of hens' dung, a dragon's liver, a lizard torn apart, a mouse torn apart, a scorpion itself laid on its own sting, or roasted and taken as food, or drunk in 2 cyathi of neat wine. It is peculiar to scorpions that they do not strike the palm of the hand, and that they do not touch the hairs when seen. A little stone of any kind, from the side that was on the ground, laid on the sting, relieves the pain; likewise a potsherd, which has been covered with earth on one part, is said to free it when laid on (those who apply it must not look back, and must take care that the sun does not see it); and earthworms, ground and laid on.
92| There are many other remedies from them as well, for which reason they are kept in honey. The owl is hostile to bees and wasps and hornets and leeches; those who have on them the beak of Mars's woodpecker are not stung by them. The smallest locusts without wings, which they call attelebi, are hostile too. There is also a venomous kind of ant, hardly found in Italy. Cicero calls them solipugae, Baetica salpugae. Against these a bat's heart is contrary, and against all ants. We have said that cantharides resist salamanders.
93| But in these there is a great question, since they are themselves poisons, blistering the bladder when drunk, with extreme torment. Cossinus, a Roman knight known for his friendship with the emperor Nero, when he was seized with lichen, was killed by a physician called from Egypt by Caesar for this complaint of his, when he had wished to prepare him with a drink of cantharides. But it is not doubtful that, applied, they do good, with the juice of the taminia grape and the tallow of a sheep or goat.
94| In which part of the cantharides themselves the venom lies is not agreed among the authors. Some think it is in the feet and head, others deny it. It is agreed only that their wings help, in whatever part the venom is. They are born from a little worm in the sponge of the dog-rose, which forms on the stem, but most fruitfully on the ash; the others on the white rose, less potent. The most powerful of all are those variegated with yellow lines which they have across the wings, and fat; much more inert are the small, broad, hairy ones; the most useless are the lean ones of one colour.
95| They are stored in an unpitched earthen jar tied up with linen, a ripe rose thrown in, and are hung above boiling vinegar with salt until they are steamed through the little linen cloth, and afterwards put away. Their power is to burn the body and to raise scabs. The same applies to pine caterpillars born on the pitch pine, and to the buprestis, and they are prepared similarly; all are most effective against leprous eruptions and lichens. They are said also to bring on the monthly flow and urine; for that reason Hippocrates gave them to dropsy patients too.
96| Cantharides were made a charge against Cato of Utica, as though he had sold poison at the royal auction, since he had knocked them down for 60 sesterces. And let it be said in passing that ostrich fat then sold for 30 sesterces, of more effective use for everything than goose fat.
97| We have also spoken of kinds of poisoned honey. Against it they use honey in which bees have died. The same, drunk in wine, is a remedy for the ills that arise from eating fish.
98| In the bite of a mad dog, the ash of a dog's head smeared on the wound protects against the dread of water. All such things must be burned in the same way, to say it once: in a new earthen vessel coated with clay, and so put into an oven. The same helps in a drink. Some have for that reason given it to be eaten. Others have tied on a worm from a dog's carcass, or placed the menses of a bitch in a cloth under the cup, or inserted burned hairs of the dog's tail into the wound itself.
99| Dogs flee one who has a dog's heart; they do not bark if a dog's tongue is put under the big toe in the shoe, or if people have a weasel's tail, cut off when the animal was let go. There is a slime of saliva under the tongue of a mad dog which, given in a drink, does not allow people to become hydrophobic; far more useful, however, is the liver of the one that bit in its madness, given, if it can be done, raw to be chewed; if not, cooked in any way, or the broth of the cooked flesh.
100| There is a little worm in the tongue of dogs, called lytta by the Greeks; when it is taken out of puppies, they neither become mad nor feel disgust. The same, carried three times around a fire, is given to those bitten by a mad dog, that they may not become mad. The brain of a chicken also meets it, but swallowed it helps for that year only. They say too that the comb of a cock, pounded, is effectively applied, and goose fat with honey. The flesh of those that were mad is also salted, to be given in food for the same remedies.
101| Indeed puppies are killed at once in water, according to the sex of the one that bit, so that the raw liver may be swallowed from them. Chicken dung helps, the red only, laid on in vinegar; so does the ash of the tail of a shrew, provided that the animal itself, from which it was cut off, is let go alive; a clod from a swallow's nest smeared on in vinegar, or the burned young of a swallow; the membrane, or old age, of snakes cast off at the spring sloughing, ground with a male crab in wine; this also, laid away by itself in chests and cupboards, kills moths.
102| The power of the evil is so great that even the trodden urine of a mad dog does harm, most of all to those with an ulcer. The remedy is horse dung sprinkled with vinegar and warmed, laid on in a fig. One would wonder less at this who considers that a stone a dog has bitten came to be a proverb for discord. Those who have relieved themselves into a dog's urine, they say, feel a torpor of the loins. (The lizard which they call seps, others chalcis, drunk in wine, heals its own bites.)
103| Against poisonings made from the wild weasel, the broth of an old chicken, drunk in quantity, is the contrary; specially against aconita a little salt should be added. The dung of hens, the white only, boiled in hyssop or in honeyed wine, serves against the poisons of mushrooms and boleti, and likewise against inflations and chokings, which we may wonder at, since, if another animal has tasted that dung, it is affected with gripings and inflations.
104| Goose blood avails against sea-hares with an equal portion of oil; the same acts against all bad drugs, with Lemnian red ochre and the juice of the white thorn, so that five drachmas of the pastilles are drunk in three cyathi of water. Likewise a weasel's young, prepared as we said above; the rennet of a lamb also is potent against all bad drugs; likewise the blood of Pontic ducks, and so it is kept thickened and diluted with wine; some think the blood of the female duck more effective.
105| In a similar way against all poisons the stomach of storks avails, the rennet of a sheep, the broth from the flesh of rams, specially against cantharides, as does the warm milk of sheep, and besides for those who have drunk buprestis or aconitum, the dung of wild pigeons, specially against a drink of quicksilver; against toxica, the common weasel, preserved, drunk in two drachmas.
106| Baldness is filled in by the ash of the dung of flocks with oil of cyprus and honey, and likewise by the hooves of a mule, male or female, with oil of myrtle; besides, as our Varro reports, mouse dung, which he calls muscerdae, or the heads of flies, fresh, first rubbed with a fig leaf. Others use the blood of flies, others for 10 days smear on their ash with the ash of papyrus or of nuts so that a third portion is of flies; others work the ash of flies with woman's milk and cabbage, some with honey only. No animal is thought less teachable or of lesser understanding; it is the more wonderful that at Olympia, in the sacred contest, when a bull is sacrificed to the god whom they call Myiodes, clouds of them depart beyond that territory.
107| Baldness is also remedied by the ash of the heads and tails of mice, and of a whole mouse, especially if this injury has come about by poisoning; likewise by the ash of a hedgehog with honey, or its hide burned with liquid pitch. Its head burned, by itself, even restores hairs to scars; but in that treatment the places of baldness must first be prepared with a razor; and some have preferred to use mustard in vinegar. All that will be said of the hedgehog will be so much the more effective in the porcupine.
108| Lizards also, burned as we have taught with the root of fresh reed (which, so that it may be burned together, must be split small), with the ash mixed with oil of myrtle, hold back the shedding of the hair. Green lizards do all the same things more effectively, still more usefully with salt and bear fat and crushed onion mixed in. Some boil down ten green ones in 10 sextarii of old oil, content to anoint once a month.
109| The ash of viper skins fills baldness most quickly, and so does fresh chicken dung smeared on. A raven's egg, mixed in a bronze vessel and smeared on a shaved head, brings blackness of the hair, but until it dries, oil must be held in the mouth, lest the teeth too turn black, and this must be done in the shade and not washed off before four days.
110| Others use its blood and brain with black wine; others boil down the bird itself and at dead of night put it away in a lead vessel. Some smear bald places with ground cantharis and liquid pitch, the skin prepared with natron (their power is caustic, and care must be taken that they do not ulcerate deeply); afterwards, on the ulcers so made, they bid the heads of mice and the gall of mice and dung to be smeared on, with hellebore and pepper.
111| Nits are removed by dog fat, or by snakes taken in food in the manner of eels, or by their spring slough, which they cast off, drunk; scurf by sheep's gall with Cimolian chalk smeared on the head until it dries.
112| For pains of the head a remedy is found in snails which are found naked, not yet completed, with the heads removed and the stony hardness taken out of them (it is of the breadth of a pebble, and these are tied on, but the small ones are smeared on the forehead ground up, and likewise oesypum), the bones from the head of a vulture tied on, or its brain with oil and cedria, the head anointed and the inside of the nostrils smeared;
113| a crow's brain cooked and taken in food, or an owl's; a cock, if shut up and kept without food day and night, with the same fasting for the one whose head aches, the feathers plucked from its neck and bound around, or the combs; the ash of a weasel smeared on; a twig from a kite's nest placed under the pillow; the skin of a mouse burned and the ash smeared on in vinegar; the little bone of a slug found between two cart-ruts, passed through gold, silver and ivory, and tied on in a dog-skin pouch, a remedy which helps many and always.
114| A spider's web laid on a broken head with oil and vinegar does not come away until the wound is healed. This also stops the blood from barbers' wounds, while for a flow from the brain, goose blood or duck blood is poured in, and the fat of the same birds with oil of roses. Having cut off the head of a snail feeding in the morning, with a reed, especially at full moon, they bind it on in a linen cloth for headaches, or smear it on the forehead with lycium or white wax added. And they bind dog hairs in a cloth.
115| A crow's brain taken in food is said to produce eyelashes, and oesypum with myrrh smeared on with a hot probe. The ash of flies and of mouse dung in equal portions, to the amount of half the weight of a denarius, is promised to do the same, with 2 sixths of a denarius of stibi added, so that all is smeared on with oesypum; and likewise the young of a mouse ground in old wine to the thickness of acopum.
116| Troublesome hairs in the eyelids, once plucked out, are not allowed to grow again by the gall of a hedgehog, the liquid of the eggs of a stellio, the ash of a salamander, or the gall of a green lizard in white wine hardened in the sun in a bronze vessel to the thickness of honey, the ash of young swallows with the milk of tithymallus, and the foam of snails.
117| The Magi say that glaucomata are put right by the brain of a seven-day-old puppy, a probe being let down into the right side if the right eye is being treated, into the left if the left; or by the fresh gall of the axio; this is a kind of owl, in which a feather quivers like ears. Apollonius of Pitane preferred that suffusion of the eyes be treated by dog's gall rather than hyena's, with honey, and likewise albugines.
118| They say that clearness of sight is restored to those anointed with the ash of the heads and tails of mice with honey, and much more with the ash of a dormouse or a wild mouse, or the brain or gall of an eagle with Attic honey. The ash from the head of a shrew, ground with stibi, helps watering eyes very much (what stibi is we shall say among the metals); the ash of a weasel for suffusions, and of a lizard, and a swallow's brain. Snails pounded and smeared on the forehead quiet rheums, whether by themselves or with fine meal or frankincense; so too they help the sun-struck, that is those seized by the sun. It is also most useful to burn them alive and to anoint dimness of sight with their ash and Cretan honey.
119| For the eyes of beasts of burden, the membrane of an asp, which it sheds in spring, with its fat, gives clearness to those anointed. It is most useful to burn a live viper in a new earthen pot, with the juice of fennel added up to one cyathus and one grain of frankincense, and to anoint with it for suffusions of the eyes and dimness; that medicine is called echeon.
120| A salve for the eyes is also made from a viper rotted in a pot, with the little worms born from it ground with saffron. And salt is burned in a pot, which by licking they gain clearness of the eyes, and seasonable health of the stomach and of the whole body; this salt is given also to flocks for the sake of health and is added to the antidote against serpents.
121| Some also use vipers in food for the eyes. First of all, immediately after it is killed, they bid salt to be put into its mouth until it melts, then, having cut off 4 finger-breadths at each end and taken out the entrails, they boil it down in water, oil, salt and dill, and either eat it at once or gather it up in bread so as to use it more often. The broth, besides what has been said above, drives lice from the whole body, and itches of the surface of the skin. The ash of a viper's head also shows its effect by itself (they anoint the eyes with it to the greatest advantage), and likewise viper fat.
122| As to the gall I would not boldly recommend what they prescribe, since, as we have taught in its place, there is no other venom of serpents. The fat of snakes mixed with verdigris heals ruptured parts of the eyes, and the membrane, or old age, cast off by them at the spring sloughing, if rubbed on, produces clearness. The gall of the boa also is advertised for albugines, suffusions and dimness, and the fat likewise for clearness.
123| With the gall of the eagle, which we have said tests its young by making them look at the sun, mixed with Attic honey, clouds, dimness and suffusions of the eyes are anointed. The same power is in vulture gall with leek juice and a little honey, and in the gall of a cock, diluted in water, for argema and albugines, and likewise for suffusions of the eyes, above all that of a white cock. They point out also that the dung of chickens, the red only, is smeared on for the purblind.
124| They praise also the gall of a hen, and especially the fat, against pustules in the pupils, and clearly they do not fatten them for the sake of this. It helps marvellously also ruptured coats of the eyes, with the stones schistus and haematites mixed in. Their dung too, the white only, they keep in old oil and in horn boxes for albugines of the pupils. In mentioning which it should be noted that peacocks are reported to swallow their own dung again, grudging it to human uses.
125| A hawk, boiled down in rose oil, is held to be most effective for anointing in all defects, and so is the ash of its dung with Attic honey. They praise also a kite's liver; pigeon dung in vinegar for aegilopia, and similarly for albugines and scars; goose gall; the blood of ducks for bruised eyes, so that afterwards they are anointed with oesypum and honey; the gall of partridges with an equal weight of honey, but by itself for clearness. They think this was added on the authority of Hippocrates, that they order it be kept in a silver box.
126| Partridge eggs boiled in a bronze vessel with honey treat ulcers of the eyes and glaucomata. The blood of pigeons, wood-pigeons, turtle-doves and partridges helps eyes suffused with blood outstandingly. In pigeons they think the male's more effective; a vein under the wing is cut for this purpose, since by its own heat it is more useful. Over it should be laid a plaster boiled in honey, and greasy wool in oil or wine.
127| The blood of the same birds heals night-blindness, and so does the liver of sheep, as we said of goats, more effectively that of the tawny. They advise also to wash the eyes with a decoction of it, and to smear on the marrow for pains and swellings. The ash of an owl's eyes, mixed in a salve, is promised to give clearness to the eyes. The dung of a turtle-dove thins albugines, as does the ash of snails and the dung of the cenchris;
128| the Greeks make this of the hawk kind. Argema is cured with honey by all the things written above. Honey in which bees have died is most useful to the eyes. Whoever eats a stork's chick is said not to suffer from running eyes for many years in succession, and likewise whoever has a dragon's head. With its fat and honey and old oil they report that beginning dimness is dispersed. They blind swallows' young at full moon, and when their sight is restored their heads are burned; the ash with honey is used for clearness, and for pains and running eyes and blows.
129| Lizards also are taken in several ways for remedies of the eyes. Some shut up a green one in a new earthen vessel, and seal with nine seals little stones called cinaedia, which are also commonly tied on for swellings of the groin, and take out one each day; on the ninth day they let the lizard go, and keep the little stones for pains of the eyes.
130| Others spread earth beneath a green lizard they have blinded, and shut up with it in a glass vessel rings of solid iron or gold. When through the glass the lizard appears to have recovered its sight, it is let go and the rings are used against running eyes; others use the ash of its head instead of stibi for roughnesses. Some burn a green one with a long neck, born in sandy places, and anoint the beginning of a rheum with it, and glaucomata too.
131| They say that the sight of weasels also returns when the eyes have been picked out, and they do with them the same as with lizards and rings; that the right eye of a snake, tied on, helps against rheums, if the snake is let go alive. For eyes that water without end, the ash of the head of stelliones with stibi cures outstandingly. The web of the fly-spider, and especially its very lair, laid across the forehead to both temples in some plaster, in such a way that it is both taken and laid on by a boy not yet grown, and he does not show himself for three days to the person who is being treated, and no one else touches the ground barefoot in those days, is said to cure rheums marvellously;
132| albugines too are removed by anointing with a white spider with very long and slender feet, ground up in old oil. Even that one whose web is thickest, commonly in the rafters, tied on in a cloth, is reported to cure rheums. The nature of the green scarab sharpens the sight of those who look at it; and so engravers of gems rest their eyes by looking at them.
133| The ears are cleansed by the gall of a sheep with honey; a dripping of dog's milk quiets pain; for heaviness, fat with wormwood and old oil, and likewise goose fat. Some add onion juice, others in equal measure. They use also the eggs of ants by themselves, for this animal too has its medicine, and it is established that sick bears are cured by this food.
134| The fat of geese and of all birds is prepared [….] and all the veins removed, a new earthen pan covered, set in the sun above boiling water, melted and strained through linen bags and put away in a new earthen vessel in a cold place; it rots less with honey added. The ash of mice, dripped in with honey, or boiled down in rose oil, quiets pains of the ears. If any animal has entered, the special remedy is mouse gall diluted in vinegar; if water has entered, goose fat with onion juice.
135| A dormouse, skinned and with its entrails taken out, is boiled down in honey in a new vessel. Physicians prefer it boiled down in nard until a third is left, and kept like that; then, when it is needed, they pour it in warmed in a strigil. It is established that ailments of the ears given up as hopeless are cured by this remedy, or if earthworms boiled down with goose grease are poured in; likewise the red worms found on trees, pounded with oil, are an excellent remedy for ulcerated and torn ears.
136| Lizards dried by being hung up, with salt put into their mouths, heal bruised ears and those made sore by a blow; most effective, however, are those that have rust-coloured spots and are also marked with lines along the tail. The milipeda, called by others centipeda or multipeda, is a creature of the earthworm kind, hairy, crawling in an arch on many feet, and contracting itself when touched; the Greeks call it oniscos, others iulos. They report that it is effective for pains of the ears boiled down in the rind of a pomegranate with leek juice. They also add rose oil and pour it into the other ear. The kind that does not arch itself, however, the Greeks call seps, others scolopendra; it is smaller and harmful.
137| Snails of the kind used as food, applied with myrrh or with powdered frankincense, and likewise the small flat ones, are smeared with honey on fractures of the ears. The slough of serpents, burnt on a hot potsherd and mixed with rose oil, is dropped in; it is effective, indeed, against every ailment, but especially against a foul smell, and if the ears are purulent it is given in vinegar, better still with the gall of a goat or an ox or of a sea turtle — this same membrane is of no use if it is more than a year old, nor if it has been soaked by rain, as some think —
138| also the juice of a spider with rose oil, or by itself on wool, or with saffron; and the gryllus dug up with its earth and applied. Nigidius ascribes great authority to this creature, and the Magi greater still, because it walks backwards, bores into the earth and chirps at night. They hunt it by tying an ant with a hair and dropping it into its hole, after first blowing away the dust so that the gryllus cannot hide itself; so it is drawn out clasping the ant.
139| The membrane of a chicken's gizzard, which is usually thrown away, dried and pounded in wine, is poured warm into purulent ears, and so is hen's fat. There is a certain fat in the blatta if its head is pulled off; this, pounded together with rose oil, they say is wonderfully good for the ears, but the wool with which they have plugged it in must be taken out after a short while, for that fat very quickly turns into an animal and becomes a little worm. Others write that two or three blattae boiled down in oil are a most effective cure for the ears, and that pounded they are applied in a linen cloth to bruises.
140| This creature too is among the shameful things, but because of the wonder of nature and the care of the ancients it must be explained fully in this place. They distinguished several kinds of them: the soft ones, which they found by experience to be effective against warts, boiled down in oil and smeared on.
141| A second kind they called myloecon, which generally breeds around mills; with these, the head removed and the body pounded, Musaeus the boxer, they have left on record among their examples, was cured of leprous sores. The third kind, hateful also for the offensiveness of its smell, has a pointed hind end; with pisselaeon it heals ulcers otherwise incurable, and scrofulous swellings and pani when applied for 21 days, and wounds, bruises and malignant sores, mange and boils, with the feet and wings removed.
142| We are disgusted even to hear of these things; and yet, by Hercules, Diodorus records that he gave them with resin and honey both for jaundice and to those with orthopnoea. Such is the power that art has of giving whatever it pleases as a medicine. The most humane of them held that the ash of burnt blattae should be kept for these purposes in a horn box, or that they should be pounded and injected by clysters for those with orthopnoea or with rheum. It is at any rate agreed that, smeared on, they draw out things lodged in the body.
143| Honey in which bees have died is also very useful for the ears. Parotid swellings are reduced by pigeon's dung, either alone or with barley meal or with oat meal; by the brain or the liver of an owl poured with oil into the ear [from a parotid swelling]; by a multipeda smeared on with a third part of resin; and by grylli, either smeared on or tied on as amulets. For the remaining kinds of diseases we shall give the medicine drawn from these same animals, or from those of the same kind, in the following volume.
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