The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 5 (of 6)Pliny, the Elder
History
The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 5 (of 6)
Pliny, the Elder
Natural history -- Pre-Linnean works
We learn also, from the same sources, that the teeth of the hyæna are
useful for the cure of tooth-ache, the diseased tooth being either
touched with them, or the animal’s teeth being arranged in their
regular order, and attached to the patient; that the shoulders of this
animal are good for the cure of pains in the arms and shoulders; that
the teeth, extracted from the left side of the jaw, and wrapped in the
skin, of a sheep or he-goat, are an effectual cure for pains in the
stomach; that the lights of the animal, taken with the food, are good
for cœliac affections; that the lights, reduced to ashes and applied
with oil, are also soothing to the stomach; that the marrow of the
back-bone, used with old oil and gall, is strengthening to the sinews;
that the liver, tasted thrice just before the paroxysms, is good for
quartan fevers; that the ashes of the vertebræ, applied in hyæna’s
skin with the tongue and right foot of a sea-calf and a bull’s gall,
the whole boiled up together, are soothing for gout; that for the same
disease hyæna’s gall is advantageously employed in combination with
stone of Assos;[2231] that for cold shiverings, spasms, sudden fits of
starting, and palpitations of the heart, it is a good plan to eat some
portion of a hyæna’s heart cooked, care being taken to reduce the rest
to ashes, and to apply it with the brains of the animal to the part
affected; that this last composition, or the gall applied alone, acts
as a depilatory, the hairs being first plucked out which are wanted not
to grow again; that by this method superfluous hairs of the eyelids may
be removed; that the flesh of the loins, eaten and applied with oil,
is a cure for pains in the loins; and that sterility in females may be
removed by giving them the eye of this animal to eat, in combination
with liquorice and dill, conception within three days being warranted
as the result.
Persons afflicted with night-mare and dread of spectres, will
experience relief, they say, by attaching one of the large teeth of a
hyæna to the body, with a linen thread. In fits of delirium too, it
is recommended to fumigate the patient with the smoke of one of these
teeth, and to attach one in front of his chest, with the fat of the
kidneys, or else the liver or skin. They assert also that a pregnant
woman will never miscarry, if she wears suspended from her neck, the
white flesh from a hyæna’s breast, with seven hairs and the genitals of
a stag, the whole tied up in the skin of a gazelle. The genitals, they
say, eaten with honey, act as a stimulant upon a person, according to
the sex, and this even though it should be the case of a man who has
manifested an aversion to all intercourse with females.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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