Some persons boil it with white beans and a ptisan[999] of barley, and then dry it in the sun; others, again, with white wool and beans, till such time as it imparts no darkness to the wool; after which, first adding fossil[1000] salt, they change the water from time to time, and then dry it during the forty hottest days of summer. In some instances the practice is, to boil it in water in a swine’s paunch, and then to take it out and rub it with nitre; after which, following the preceding method, they pound it in a mortar with salt. Some again never boil it, but pound it only with salt, and then rinse it with water. Scum of silver is used as an ingredient in eye-salves, and, in the form of a liniment, by females, for the purpose of removing spots and blemishes caused by scars, as also in washes for the hair. Its properties are desiccative, emollient, refrigerative, temperative, and detergent. It fills up cavities in the flesh produced by ulceration, and reduces tumours. For all these purposes it is employed as an ingredient in plaster, and in the liparæ previously mentioned.[1001] In combination with rue, myrtle, and vinegar, it removes erysipelas: and, with myrtle and wax, it is a cure for chilblains. CHAP. 36. (7.)—MINIUM: FOR WHAT RELIGIOUS PURPOSES IT WAS USED BY THE ANCIENTS. It is also in silver-mines that minium[1002] is found, a pigment held at the present day in very high estimation; and by the Romans in former times not only held in the highest estimation, but used for sacred purposes as well. Verrius enumerates certain authors, upon whose testimony we find it satisfactorily established that it was the custom upon festivals to colour the face of the statue of Jupiter even with minium, as well as the bodies[1003] of triumphant generals; and that it was in this guise that Camillus celebrated his triumph. We find, too, that it is through the same religious motives that it is employed at the present day for colouring the unguents used at triumphal banquets, and that it is the first duty of the censors to make a contract for painting the statue of Jupiter[1004] with this colour. For my own part, I am quite at a loss for the origin of this usage; but it is a well-known fact, that at the present day even, minium is in great esteem with the nations of Æthiopia, their nobles being in the habit of staining the body all over with it, and this being the colour appropriated to the statues of their gods. I shall therefore use all the more diligence in enquiring into all the known facts respecting it. CHAP. 37.—THE DISCOVERY AND ORIGIN OF MINIUM.