“_Symbola adulantum cernis, Rosa, Piscis amorum,_[704]
_Non sane unius Symbola certa mali._
_Nam Rosa verna suis non est sine sentibus, idem_
_Piscis habet spinas intus et ipse suas._
_Pulchra Rosa est, verum illa brevi fit marcida, piscis_
_Est ferus, esse aliqua nec cicur arte potest._”
One lemma “_Pingit et delectat_” is not the author’s happiest effort.
That attached to the only illustration of a man fishing—_Tenet et
tenetur_—tersely depicts the happy angler.
Many instances illustrating the importance attached to fish, both in
diet and in medicine, are to be found scattered through my pages. I
would, however, wager that in addition to these multiplied even one
thousandfold, there would yet remain in the pages of medical[705] and
other writers (even if we stop as early as Aëtius) matter sufficient
for a large Monograph.[706]
In one book alone of Pliny’s (XXXII.) fish are recommended as remedies,
internal or external, no less than (according to my rough reckoning)
342 times!
If Hippocrates, “the father of Medicine,” in the fifth century B.C.
(_c._ 460-359) laid the foundation, Galen some six centuries later
(131-201 A.D.) crowned the edifice of that science. The cry and
the practice of the former, “Back to Nature,” was energetically
enjoined and brilliantly defended against the inevitable reactions
of the Alexandrian and other schools by the latter, who acclaims his
predecessor as “divine.”
In his insistent teaching “Ensue Health,” as the one and only thing
alike for patients and physicians, Galen[707] might well have adopted
the last line of Ariphron’s glorious pæan to Health:
μετὰ σεῖο, μάκαιρ’ Ὑγίεια,
τέθαλε πάντα καὶ λάμπει Χαρίτων ἔαρι
σέθεν δὲ χωρὶς οὔτις εὐδαίμων ἔφυ.
In his own case success crowned his efforts. He boldly boasts that he
did not desire to be esteemed a physician, if from his twenty-eighth
year to old age he had not lived in perfect health, except for some
slight fevers, of which he soon rid himself.[708] Perhaps a secondary
motive was not absent, viz. the desire to avoid the taunt so often
levelled at medical men:
ἄλλων ἰατρὸς αὐτὸς ἔλκεσιν βρύεις,
which Urquhart in his _Rabelais_ translates,
“He boasts of healing poor and rich,
Yet is himself all over itch!”
As regards fish as a diet in health and sickness, _quot medici, tot
sententiæ_ seems hardly exaggeration. Their wondrous unanimity as
regards the food-properties of the Eel amazes, for with fish it was
usually a case “where doctors disagree.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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