Josephus tells a tale which was probably the foundation of what was afterwards told about the mandrake. Xenocrates had a fancy for advising people to eat human brains, flesh or liver, or to swallow for various complaints the ground bones of parts of the human frame. Alexander of Tralles says that even Galen did homage to incantations.[573] He gives his words: “Some think that incantations are like old wives’ tales; as I did for a long while. But at last I was convinced that there is virtue in them by plain proofs before my eyes. For I had trial of their beneficial operations in the case of those scorpion-stung, nor less in the case of bones stuck fast in the throat, immediately, by an incantation thrown up. And many of them are excellent, severally, and they reach their mark.” Yet Galen is angry with Pamphilos for “his babbling incantations,” which were “not merely useless, not merely unprofessional, but all false: no good even to little boys, not to say students of medicine.”[574] Alexander of Tralles frequently prescribes amulets and the like. Mr. Cockayne calls them periapts. “Thus for colic, he guarantees by his own experience, and the approval of almost all the best doctors, dung of a wolf, with bits of bone in it if possible, shut up in a pipe, and worn during the paroxysm, on the right arm, or thigh, or hip, taking care it touches neither the earth nor a bath. A lark eaten is good. The Thracians pick out its heart, while alive, and make a periapt, wearing it on the left thigh. A part of the cæcum of a pig prepared with myrrh, and put in a wolf’s or dog’s skin, is a good thing to wear. A ring with Hercules strangling a lion on the Median stone[575] is good to wear.