COMMENTARY. We have treated of the properties of milk so fully in the First Book that we need not enlarge on the subject in this place. Our author’s account of it is abridged from Galen. Dioscorides, Galen, Celsus, Serapion, and most of the authorities, recommend milk as a remedy when acrid substances, such as cantharides or arsenic, have been swallowed. Dioscorides says whey is beneficial in cases of melancholy, epilepsy, lepra, elephantiasis, and exanthemata in all parts of the body. He recommends new milk as a gargle in all ulcerations of the mouth, and in defluxions on the bowels with ulceration and tenesmus. He says, the milk of sheep, cows, or goats stops them, when boiled with pebbles, and injected either by itself or with ptisan, or the decoction of chondrus; it is also injected, he adds, in ulcerations of the womb. A woman’s milk, he says, when sucked from the breast, relieves erosion of the stomach and phthisis; it suits the cure of those who have drunk of the sea-hare, and is otherwise useful as an application to the eyes, and to the gout. All kinds of milk, he adds, are inapplicable in diseased spleen, diseased liver, vertigo, epilepsy, all nervous affections, fevers, and headaches, unless when the schiston is given to move the bowels. What the schiston was we have explained in the First Book (§ 88.) All the other authorities, whether Greek or Arabian, in treating of milk, follow Dioscorides and Galen. See in particular Serapion (De Simpl. 457.) Celsus entertained nearly the same views, with regard to milk, as the Greek authorities. Thus he recommends it in phthisis, and as an antidote to various poisons, but condemns it in headaches and acute fevers. Hippocrates prescribes milk in various instances, and seems to have been very partial to the use of it. He recommends the schiston, prepared with pebbles, in affections of the bowels. (Epidem. vii.) Γαλὴ, Mustella, _the Weasel_; when burnt, its ashes are discutient. Wherefore when rubbed in along with vinegar it relieves gout and rheumatism; when prepared and dried it answers with epilepsies. * * * * * COMMENTARY. According to Sprengel, the Γαλη is a species of mustella, but neither the _M. communis_, called _weasel_ in English, nor the _M. Furo_, or _Ferret_. Our author’s description of its medicinal virtues is taken from Dioscorides. Γάλιον, Galium, _Yellow Ladies’ Bedstraw_, or _Cheese Rennet_; it derives its name of Galium from its coagulating milk. It resembles the cleavers, and is desiccative and subacrid. The flower of it suits with hemorrhages and burns. * * * * *