Another thing universally acknowledged and one which I am ready to believe with the greatest pleasure, is the fact, that if the door-posts are only touched with the menstruous fluid all spells of the magicians will be neutralized—a set of men the most lying in existence, as any one may ascertain. I will give an example of one of the most reasonable of their prescriptions—Take the parings of the toe-nails and finger-nails of a sick person, and mix them up with wax, the party saying that he is seeking a remedy for a tertian, quartan, or quotidian fever, as the case may be; then stick this wax, before sunrise, upon the door of another person—such is the prescription they give for these diseases! What deceitful persons they must be if there is no truth in it! And how highly criminal, if they really do thus transfer diseases from one person to another! Some, of them, again, whose practices are of a less guilty nature, recommend that the parings of all the finger-nails should be thrown at the entrance of ant-holes, the first ant to be taken which attempts to draw one into the hole; this, they say, must be attached to the neck of the patient, and he will experience a speedy cure. CHAP. 24. (8.)—REMEDIES DERIVED FROM FOREIGN ANIMALS: THE ELEPHANT, EIGHT REMEDIES. Such then are the remedies from human beings which may with any degree of propriety be described, and many of those with the leave and good-will of the reader. The rest are of a most execrable and infamous nature, such, in fact, as to make me hasten to close my description of the remedies derived from man: we will therefore proceed to speak of the more remarkable animals, and the effects produced by them. The blood of the elephant, the male in particular, arrests all those defluxions known by the name of “rheumatismi.” Ivory shavings, it is said, in combination with Attic honey, are good for the removal of spots upon the face: with the sawdust, too, of ivory, hangnails are removed. By the touch of an elephant’s trunk head-ache is alleviated, if the animal happens to sneeze at the time more particularly. The right side of the trunk attached to the body with red earth of Lemnos, acts powerfully as an aphrodisiac. Elephant’s blood is good for consumption and the liver for epilepsy. CHAP. 25.—TEN REMEDIES DERIVED FROM THE LION.