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
In cases of epilepsy, it is a good plan to eat a bear’s testes, or
those of a wild boar, with mares’ milk or water; or else to drink a
wild boar’s urine with honey and vinegar, that being the best which
has been left to dry in the bladder. The testes, also, of swine are
prescribed, dried and beaten up in sows’ milk, the patient abstaining
from wine some days before and after taking the mixture. The lights
of a hare, too, are recommended, salted, and taken with one third of
frankincense, for thirty consecutive days, in white wine: hare’s rennet
also; and asses’ brains, smoked with burning leaves, and administered
in hydromel, in doses of half an ounce per day. An ass’s hoofs are
reduced to ashes, and taken for a month together, in doses of two
spoonfuls; the testes, also, of an ass, salted and mixed with the
drink, asses’ milk or water in particular. The secundines, also, of a
she-ass are recommended, more particularly when it is a male that has
been foaled: placed beneath the nostrils of the patient, when the fits
are likely to come on, this substance will effectually repel them.
There are some persons who recommend the patient to eat the heart
of a black he-ass in the open air with bread, upon the first or
second day of the moon: others, again, prescribe the flesh of that
animal, and others the blood, diluted with vinegar, and taken for
forty days together. Some mix horse-stale for this purpose, with
smithy water fresh from the forge, employing the same mixture for the
cure of delirium. Epilepsy is also treated with mares’ milk, or the
excrescences from a horse’s legs, taken in honey and vinegar. The
magicians highly recommend goats’ flesh, grilled upon a funeral pile;
as also the suet of that animal, boiled with an equal quantity of
bull’s gall, and kept in the gall-bladder; care being taken not to let
it touch the ground, and the patient swallowing it in water, standing
aloft.[2368] The smell arising from a goat’s horns or deer’s antlers,
burnt, efficiently detects the presence of epilepsy.
In cases where persons are suddenly paralyzed, the urine of an ass’s
foal, applied to the body with nard, is very useful, it is said.
CHAP. 64.—REMEDIES FOR JAUNDICE.
For the cure of jaundice, the ashes of a stag’s antlers are employed;
or the blood of an ass’s foal, taken in wine. The first dung,[2369]
too, that has been voided by the foal after its birth, taken in wine,
in pieces the size of a bean, will effect a cure by the end of three
days. The dung of a new-born colt is possessed of a similar efficacy.
CHAP. 65.—REMEDIES FOR BROKEN BONES.
For broken hones, a sovereign remedy is the ashes of the jaw-bone
of a wild boar or swine: boiled bacon, too, tied round the broken
bone, unites it with marvellous rapidity. For fractures of the ribs,
goats’ dung, applied in old wine, is extolled as the grand remedy,
being possessed in a high degree of aperient, extractive, and healing
properties.
CHAP. 66.—REMEDIES FOR FEVERS.
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