Book XXIX. Remedies Derived from Living Creatures.

Chaps. 1-9.

Chap. 1. (1.)—The Origin of the Medical Art.

The nature and multiplicity of the various remedies already described or which still remain to be enlarged upon, compel me to enter upon some further details with reference to the art of medicine itself: aware as I am, that no one [He must surely have forgotten Celsus; unless, indeed, Pliny was unacquainted with his treatise “De Medicinâ.”] has hitherto treated of this subject in the Latin tongue, and that if all new enterprises are difficult or of doubtful success, it must be one in particular which is so barren of all charms to recommend it, and accompanied with such difficulties of illustration. It will not improbably suggest itself, however, to those who are familiar with this subject, to make enquiry how it is that in the practice of medicine the use of simples has been abandoned, so convenient as they are and so ready prepared to our hand: and they will be inclined to feel equal surprise and indignation when they are informed that no known art, lucrative as this is beyond all the rest, has been more fluctuating, or subjected to more frequent variations.

Commencing by ranking its inventors in the number of the gods, [Apollo and Æsculapius, Agenor, Hercules, Chiron, and others.] and consecrating for them a place in heaven, the art of medicine, at the present day even, teaches us in numerous instances to have recourse to the oracles for aid. In more recent times again, the same art has augmented its celebrity, at the cost perhaps of being charged with criminality, by devising the fable that Æsculapius was struck by lightning for presuming to raise Tyndareus [The husband of Leda, and the father of Castor, Timandra, Clytæmnestra, and Philonoë. Hippolytus also was fabled to have been raised from the dead by Æsculapius.] to life. And this example notwithstanding, it has not hesitated to relate how that others, through its agency, have since been restored to life. Already enjoying celebrity in the days of the Trojan War, its traditions from that period have acquired an additional degree of certainty; although in those times, we may remark, the healing art confined itself solely to the treatment of wounds.

Chap. 2.—Particulars Relative to Hippocrates. Date of the Origins of Clinical Practice and of That of Iatraliptics.

Its succeeding history, a fact that is truly marvellous, remains enveloped in the densest night, down to the time of the Peloponnesian War; [Hippocrates is generally supposed to have been born B.C. 460.] at which period it was restored to light by the agency of Hippocrates, a native of Cos, an island flourishing and powerful in the highest degree, and consecrated to Æsculapius. It being the practice for persons who had recovered from a disease to describe in the temple of that god the remedies to which they had owed their restoration to health, that others might derive benefit therefrom in a similar emergency; Hippocrates, it is said, copied out these prescriptions, and, as our fellow-countryman Varro will have it, after burning the temple to the ground, [In order to destroy the medical books and prescriptions there. The same story is told, with little variation, of Avicenna. Cnidos is also mentioned as the scene of this act of philosophical incendiarism.] instituted that branch of medical practice which is known as “Clinics.” [“Clinice”—Chamber-physic, so called because the physician visited his patients ἐν κλίνῃ, “in bed.”] There was no limit after this to the profits derived from the practice of medicine; for Prodicus, [It is supposed by most commentators that Pliny commits a mistake here, and that in reality he is alluding to Herodicus of Selymbria in Thrace, who was the tutor, and not the disciple, of Hippocrates. Prodicus of Selymbria does not appear to be known.] a native of Selymbria, one of his disciples, founded the branch of it known as “Iatraliptics,” [“Healing by ointments,” or, as we should call it at the present day, “The Friction cure.”] and so discovered a means of enriching the very anointers even and the commonest drudges [“Mediastinis.”] employed by the physicians.

Chap. 3.—Particulars Relative to Chrysippus and Erasistratus.

In the rules laid down by these professors, changes were effected by Chrysippus with a vast parade of words, and, after Chrysippus, by Erasistratus, son [Pythias, the daughter of Aristotle, was his stepmother, and adopted him. His mother’s name was Cretoxena.] of the daughter of Aristotle. For the cure of King Antiochus—to give our first illustration of the profits realized by the medical art—Erasistratus received from his son, King Ptolemæus, the sum of one hundred talents.

Chap. 4.—The Empiric Branch of Medicine.

Another sect again, known as that of the Empirics [Or “Sect of Experimentalists.” They based their practice upon experience derived from the observation of facts. The word “Empiric” is used only in a bad sense at the present day. For an account of Hippocrates, see end of B. vii.; of Chrysippus, see end of B. xx.; and of Erasistratus, see end of B. xi.] —because it based its rules upon the results of experiment—took its rise in Sicily, having for its founder Acron of Agrigentum, a man recommended by the high authority of Empedocles [See end of B. xi.] the physician.

Chap. 5.—Particulars Relative to Herophilus and Other Celebrated Physicians. The Various Changes That Have Been Made in the System of Medicine.

These several schools of medicine, long at variance among themselves, were all of them condemned by Herophilus, [See end of B. xi.] who regulated the arterial pulsation according to the musical [See B. xi. c. 88. The Chinese, Ajasson remarks, apply the musical scale to the pulsation; it being a belief of the Mandarins that the body is a musical instrument, and that to be in health it must be kept in tune.] scale, correspondingly with the age of the patient. In succeeding years again, the theories of this sect were abandoned, it being found that to belong to it necessitated an acquaintance with literature. Changes, too, were effected in the school, of which, as already [In B. xxvi. cc. 7, 8.] stated, Asclepiades had become the founder. His disciple, Themison, [See end of B. xi.] who at first in his writings implicitly followed him, soon afterwards, in compliance with the growing degeneracy of the age, went so far as to modify his own methods of treatment; which, in their turn, were entirely displaced, with the authorization of the late Emperor Augustus, by Antonius Musa, [See B. xix. c. 38.] a physician who had rescued that prince from a most dangerous malady, by following a mode of treatment diametrically opposite.

I pass over in silence many physicians of the very highest celebrity, the Cassii, for instance, the Calpetani, the Arruntii, and the Rubrii, men who received fees yearly from the great, amounting to no less than two hundred and fifty thousand sesterces. As for Q. Stertinius, he thought that he conferred an obligation upon the emperors in being content with five hundred thousand [Rather more than £4400.] sesterces per annum; and indeed he proved, by an enumeration of the several houses, that a city practice would bring him in a yearly income of not less than six hundred thousand sesterces.

Fully equal to this was the sum lavished upon his brother by Claudius Cæsar; and the two brothers, although they had drawn largely upon their fortunes in beautifying the public buildings at Neapolis, left to their heirs no less than thirty millions of sesterces! [More than £265,000.] such an estate as no physician but Arruntius had till then possessed.

Next in succession arose Vettius Valens, rendered so notorious by his adulterous connection [For which he was put to death A.D. 48.] with Messalina, the wife of Claudius Cæsar, and equally celebrated as a professor of eloquence. When established in public favour, he became the founder of a new sect.

It was in the same age, too, during the reign of the Emperor Nero, that the destinies of the medical art passed into the hands of Thessalus, [A native of Tralles in Lydia, and the son of a weaver there. Galen mentions him in terms of contempt and ridicule.] a man who swept away all the precepts of his predecessors, and declaimed with a sort of frenzy against the physicians of every age; but with what discretion and in what spirit, we may abundantly conclude from a single trait presented by his character—upon his tomb, which is still to be seen on the Appian Way, he had his name inscribed as the “Iatronices”—the “Conqueror of the Physicians.” No stage-player, no driver of a three-horse chariot, had a greater throng attending him when he appeared in public: but he was at last eclipsed in credit by Crinas, a native of Massilia, who, to wear an appearance of greater discreetness and more devoutness, united in himself the pursuit of two sciences, and prescribed diets to his patients in accordance with the movements of the heavenly bodies, as indicated by the almanacks of the mathematicians, taking observations himself of the various times and seasons. It was but recently that he died, leaving ten millions of sesterces, after having expended hardly a less sum upon building the walls of his native place and of other towns.

It was while these men were ruling our destinies, that all at once, Charmis, a native also of Massilia, took [“Invasit.”] the City by surprise. Not content with condemning the practice of preceding physicians, he proscribed the use of warm baths as well, and persuaded people, in the very depth of winter even, to immerse themselves in cold water. His patients he used to plunge into large vessels filled with cold water, and it was a common thing to see aged men of consular rank make it a matter of parade to freeze themselves; a method of treatment, in favour of which Annæus [Ep. 53 and 83. His “adstipulatio” is of a very equivocal character, however.] Seneca gives his personal testimony, in writings still extant.

There can be no doubt whatever, that all these men, in the pursuit of celebrity by the introduction of some novelty or other, made purchase of it at the downright expense of human life. Hence those woeful discussions, those consultations at the bed-side of the patient, where no one thinks fit to be of the same opinion as another, lest he may have the appearance of being subordinate to another; hence, too, that ominous inscription to be read upon a tomb, “It was the multitude of physicians that killed me.” [“Turbâ medicorum perii.” This is supposed to be borrowed from a line of Menander— Πολλῶν ἰατρῶν εἴσοδος μ’ ἀπώλεσεν.]

The medical art, so often modified and renewed as it has been, is still on the change from day to day, and still are we impelled onwards by the puffs [“Flatu.”] which emanate from the ingenuity of the Greeks. It is quite evident too, that every one among them that finds himself skilled in the art of speech, may forthwith create himself the arbiter of our life and death: as though, forsooth, there were not thousands [Herodotus states this with reference to the Babylonians; Strabo, the Bastitani, a people of Spain; and Eusebius, the more ancient inhabitants of Spain.] of nations who live without any physicians at all, though not, for all that, without the aid of medicine. Such, for instance, was the Roman [See B. xx. c. 33.] people, for a period of more than six hundred years; a people, too, which has never shown itself slow to adopt all useful arts, and which even welcomed the medical art with avidity, until, after a fair experience of it, there was found good reason to condemn it.

Chap. 6.—Who First Practised as a Physician at Rome, and at What Period.

And, indeed, it appears to me not amiss to take the present opportunity of reviewing some remarkable facts in the days of our forefathers connected with this subject. Cassius Hemina, [See end of B. xii.] one of our most ancient writers, says that the first physician that visited Rome was Archagathus, the son of Lysanias, who came over from Peloponnesus, in the year of the City 535, L. Æmilius and M. Livius being consuls. He states also, that the right of free citizenship [“Jus Quiritium.”] was granted him, and that he had a shop [“Tabernam.” A surgery, in fact, the same as the “iatreion” of the Greeks.] provided for his practice at the public expense in the Acilian Cross-way; [Or “carrefour”—“compitum.” The Acilian Gens pretended to be under the especial tutelage of the gods of medicine.] that from his practice he received the name of “Vulnerarius;” [The “Wound-curer,” from “vulnus,” a wound.] that on his arrival he was greatly welcomed at first, but that soon afterwards, from the cruelty displayed by him in cutting and searing his patients, he acquired the new name of “Carnifex,” [“Executioner,” or “hangman.”] and brought his art and physicians in general into considerable disrepute.

That such was the fact, we may readily understand from the words of M. Cato, a man whose authority stands so high of itself, that but little weight is added to it by the triumph [For his conquests in Spain.] which he gained, and the Censorship which he held. I shall, therefore, give his own words in reference to this subject.

Chap. 7.—The Opinions Entertained by the Romans on the Ancient Physicians.

“Concerning those Greeks, son Marcus, I will speak to you more at length on the befitting occasion. I will show you the results of my own experience at Athens, and that, while it is a good plan to dip into their literature, [“Illorum literas inspicere.”] it is not worth while to make a thorough acquaintance with it. They are a most iniquitous and intractable race, and you may take my word as the word of a prophet, when I tell you, that whenever that nation shall bestow its literature upon Rome it will mar everything; and that all the sooner, if it sends its physicians among us. They have conspired among themselves to murder all barbarians with their medicine; a profession which they exercise for lucre, in order that they may win our confidence, [On the principle that that which costs money must be worth having.] and dispatch us all the more easily. They are in the common habit, too, of calling us barbarians, and stigmatize us beyond all other nations, by giving us the abominable appellation of Opici. [The Opici or Osci were an ancient tribe of Italy, settled in Campania, Latium, and Samnium. From their uncivilized habits the name was long used as a reproachful epithet, equivalent to our words “bumpkin,” “clodhopper,” or “chawbacon.”] I forbid you to have anything to do with physicians.”

Chap. 8.—Evils Attendant Upon the Practice of Medicine.

Cato, who wrote to this effect, died in his eighty-fifth year, in the year of the City 605; so that no one is to suppose that he had not sufficient time to form his experience, either with reference to the duration of the republic, or the length of his own life. Well then—are we to conclude that he has stamped with condemnation a thing that in itself is most useful? Far from it, by Hercules! for he subjoins an account of the medical prescriptions, by the aid of which he had ensured to himself and to his wife a ripe old age; prescriptions [Marked by their supereminent absurdity, as Fée remarks.] upon which we are now about to enlarge. He asserts also that he has a book of recipes in his possession, by the aid of which he treats the maladies of his son, his servants, and his friends; a book from which we have extracted the various prescriptions according to the several maladies for which they are employed.

It was not the thing itself that the ancients condemned, but it was the art as then practised, and they were shocked, more particularly, that man should pay so dear for the enjoyment of life. For this reason it was, they say, that the Temple of Æsculapius even after he was received as a divinity, was built without the City, and afterwards on an island; [Formed by the river Tiber. See the Quæst. Rom. of Plutarch, on this subject.] for this reason, too, it was, that when, long after the time of Cato, the Greeks were expelled from Italy, the physicians were not [We have adopted Sillig’s suggestion, and read “nec” for “et” here. The meaning, however, is very doubtful.] exempted from the decree. And here I will [“Augebo providentiam illorum.” The meaning of this passage also is doubtful.] improve upon the foresight displayed by them. Medicine is the only one of the arts of Greece, that, lucrative as it is, the Roman gravity has hitherto refused to cultivate. It is but very few of our fellow-citizens that have even attempted it, and so soon as ever they have done so, they have become deserters to the Greeks forthwith. [By adopting that language instead of the Latin; Sextius Niger, for instance.] Nay, even more than this, if they attempt to treat of it in any other language than Greek, they are sure to lose all credit, with the most ignorant even, and those who do not understand a word of Greek; there being all the less confidence felt by our people in that which so nearly concerns their welfare, if it happens to be intelligible to them. In fact, this is the only one of all the arts, by Hercules! in which the moment a man declares [Diplomas seem to have been less cared for in those times than at the present day even, when quackery has so free a range.] himself to be an adept, he is at once believed, there being at the same time no imposture, the results of which are more fraught with peril. To all this, however, we give no attention, so seductive is the sweet influence of the hope entertained of his ultimate recovery by each.

And then besides, there is no law in existence whereby to punish the ignorance of physicians, no instance before us of capital punishment inflicted. It is at the expense of our perils that they learn, and they experimentalize by putting us to death, a physician being the only person that can kill another with sovereign impunity. Nay, even more than this, all the blame is thrown upon the sick man only; he is accused of disobedience forthwith, and it is the person who is dead and gone that is put upon his trial. It is the usage at Rome for the decuries [See B. iii. c. 26, and B. xxxiii. cc. 7, 8.] to pass examination under the censorship of the emperor, and for inquisitions to be made at our party-walls [“Inquisitio per parietes.” The reading is doubtful, but he not improbably alludes to the employment of spies.] even: persons who are to sit in judgment on our monetary matters are sent for to Gades [Hardouin thinks that he alludes to Cornelius Balbus here, a native of Gades. See B. v. c. 5, and B. vii. 44.] and the very Pillars of Hercules; while a question of exile is never entertained without a panel of forty-five men selected for the purpose. [“Electis viris datur tabula.” He alludes to the three tablets delivered to the Judices, one of which had inscribed on it “Acquitted,” another “Not proven,” and a third “Guilty”— Absolvatur, Non liquet, and Condemno.] But when it is the judge’s own life that is at stake, who are the persons that are to hold council upon it, but those who the very next moment are about to take it!

And yet so it is, that we only meet with our deserts, no one of us feeling the least anxiety to know what is necessary for his own welfare. We walk [“In this place he casteth in the Romans’ teeth, their Lecticarii, Anagnostæ, and Nomenclatores.”— Holland. Letter-bearers, readers, and prompters as to the names of the persons addressed.] with the feet of other people, we see with the eyes of other people, trusting to the memory of others we salute one another, and it is by the aid of others that we live. The most precious objects of existence, and the chief supports [He alludes to the resources of medicine.] of life, are entirely lost to us, and we have nothing left but our pleasures to call our own. I will not leave Cato exposed to the hatred of a profession so ambitious as this, nor yet that senate which judged as he did, but at the same time I will pursue my object without wresting to my purpose the cries practised by its adepts, as some might naturally expect. For what profession has there been more fruitful in poisonings, or from which there have emanated more frauds upon wills? And then, too, what adulteries have been committed, in the very houses of our princes even! the intrigue of Eudemus, [A physician at Rome, who was afterwards put to the torture for this crime. Livia was the daughter of Drusus Nero, the brother of Tiberius.] for example, with Livia, the wife of Drusus Cæsar, and that of Valens with the royal lady previous mentioned. [Messalina, mentioned in c. 5 of this Book.] Let us not impute these evils, I say, to the art, but to the men who practise it; for Cato, I verily believe, as little apprehended such practices as these in the City, as he did the presence of royal ladies [Nothing could possibly be more remote from his republican notions, than “reginæ” at Rome.] there.

I will not accuse the medical art of the avarice even of its professors, the rapacious bargains made with their patients while their fate is trembling in the balance, the tariffs framed upon their agonies, the monies taken as earnest for the dispatching of patients, or the mysterious secrets of the craft. I will not mention how that cataract must be couched [“Emovendam.” In order that a future job may be ensured.] only, in the eye, in preference to extracting it at once—practices, all of them, which have resulted in one very great advantage, by alluring hither such a multitude of adventurers; it being no moderation on their part, but the rivalry existing between such numbers of practitioners, that keeps their charges within moderation. It is a well-known fact that Charmis, the physician [In c. 5 of this Book.] already mentioned, made a bargain with a patient of his in the provinces, that he should have two hundred thousand sesterces for the cure; that the Emperor Claudius extorted from Alcon, the surgeon, [“Vulnerum medico.”] ten millions of sesterces by way of fine; and that the same man, after being recalled from his exile in Gaul, acquired a sum equally large in the course of a few years.

These are faults, however, which must be imputed to individuals only; and it is not my intention to waste reproof upon the dregs of the medical profession, or to call attention to the ignorance displayed by that crew, [“Ejus turbæ.”] the violation of all regimen in their treatment of disease, the evasions practised in the use of warm baths, the strict diet they imperiously prescribe, the food that is crammed into these same patients, exhausted as they are, several times a day; together with a thousand other methods of showing how quick they are to change their mind, their precepts for the regulation of the kitchen, and their recipes for the composition of unguents, it being one grand object with them to lose sight of none of the usual incitements to sensuality. The importation of foreign merchandize, and the introduction of tariffs settled by foreigners, [See B. xxiv. c. 1.] would have been highly displeasing to our ancestors, I can readily imagine; but it was not these inconveniences that Cato had in view, when he spoke thus strongly in condemnation of the medical art.

“Theriace” [The origin of our word “treacle.” See B. xx. c. 100, and Note 97.] is the name given to a preparation devised by luxury; a composition formed of six hundred [Used as a round number, like our expression “ten thousand.”] different ingredients; and this while Nature has bestowed upon us such numbers of remedies, each of which would have fully answered the purpose employed by itself! The Mithridatic [See B. xxiii. c. 77, and B. xxv. c. 26.] antidote is composed of four and fifty ingredients, none of which are used in exactly the same proportion, and the quantity prescribed is in some cases so small as the sixtieth part of one denarius! Which of the gods, pray, can have instructed man in such trickery as this, a height to which the mere subtlety of human invention could surely never have reached? it clearly must emanate from a vain ostentation of scientific skill and must be set down as a monstrous system of puffing off the medical art.

And yet, after all, the physicians themselves do not understand this branch of their profession; and I have ascertained that it is a common thing for them to put mineral vermilion [“Minium.” This red lead had the name of “cinnabaris nativa,” whence the error.] in their medicines, a rank poison, as I shall have occasion [In B. xxxiii. c. 38.] to show when I come to speak of the pigments, in place of Indian cinnabar, and all because they mistake the name of the one drug for that of the other! These, however, are errors which only concern the health of individuals, while it is the practices which Cato foresaw and dreaded, less dangerous in themselves and little regarded, practices, in fact, which the leading men in the art do not hesitate to avow, that have wrought [As tending to effeminacy, or undermining the constitution.] the corruption of the manners of our empire.

The practices I allude to are those to which, while enjoying robust health, we submit: such, for instance, as rubbing the body with wax and oil, [See B. xxviii. c. 13.] a preparation for a wrestling match, by rights, but which, these men pretend, was invented as a preservative of health; the use of hot baths, which are necessary, they have persuaded us, for the proper digestion of the food, baths which no one ever leaves without being all the weaker for it, and from which the more submissive of their patients are only carried to the tomb; potions taken fasting; vomits to clear the stomach, and then a series of fresh drenchings with drink; emasculation, self-inflicted by the use of pitch-plasters as depilatories; the public exposure, too, of even the most delicate parts of the female body for the prosecution of these practices. Most assuredly so it is, the contagion which has seized upon the public morals, has had no more fertile source than the medical art, and it continues, day by day even, to justify the claims of Cato to be considered a prophet and an oracle of wisdom, in that assertion of his, that it is quite sufficient to dip into the records of Greek genius, without becoming thoroughly acquainted with them.

Such then is what may be said in justification of the senate and of the Roman people, during that period of six hundred years in which they manifested such repugnance to an art, by the most insidious terms of which, good men are made to lend their credit and authority to the very worst, and so strongly entered their protest against the silly persuasions entertained by those, who fancy that nothing can benefit them but what is coupled with high price.

I entertain no doubt, too, that there will be found some to express their disgust at the particulars which I am about to give, in relation to animals: and yet Virgil himself has not disdained—when, too, there was no necessity for his doing so—to speak of ants and weevils,

Homer, [Il. xvii. 670, et seq.] too, amid his description of the battles of the gods, has not disdained to remark upon the voracity of the common fly; nor has Nature, she who engendered man, thought it beneath her to engender these insects as well. Let each then make it his care, not so much to regard the thing itself, as to rightly appreciate in each case the cause and its effects.

Chap. 9.—Thirty-Five Remedies Derived from Wool.

I shall begin then with some remedies that are well known, those namely, which are derived from wool and from the eggs of birds, thus giving due honour to those substances which hold the principal place in the estimation of mankind; though at the same time I shall be necessitated to speak of some others out of their proper place, according as occasion may offer. I should not have been at a loss for high-flown language with which to grace my narrative, had I made it my design to regard anything else than what, as being strictly trustworthy, [He certainly does not always keep this object in view.] becomes my work: for among the very first remedies mentioned, we find those said to be derived from the ashes and nest of the phœnix, [See B. x. c. 2, and B. xii. c. 42.] as though, forsooth, its existence were a well ascertained fact, and not altogether a fable. And then besides, it would be a mere mockery to describe remedies that can only return to us once in a thousand years.

(2.) The ancient Romans attributed to wool a degree of religious importance even, and it was in this spirit that they enjoined that the bride should touch the door-posts of her husband’s house with wool. In addition to dress and protection from the cold, wool, in an unwashed state, used in combination with oil, and wine or vinegar, supplies us with numerous remedies, according as we stand in need of an emollient or an excitant, an astringent or a laxative. Wetted from time to time with these liquids, greasy wool is applied to sprained limbs, and to sinews that are suffering from pain. In the case of sprains, some persons are in the habit of adding salt, while others, again, apply pounded rue and grease, in wool: the same, too, in the case of contusions or tumours. Wool will improve the breath, it is said, if the teeth and gums are rubbed with it, mixed with honey; it is very good, too, for phrenitis, [A form of fever, Littré remarks, that is known by the moderns as “pseudo-continuous.”] used as a fumigation. To arrest bleeding at the nose, wool is introduced into the nostrils with oil of roses; or it is used in another manner, the ears being well plugged with it. In the case of inveterate ulcers it is applied topically with honey: soaked in wine or vinegar, or in cold water and oil, and then squeezed out, it is used for the cure of wounds.

Rams’ wool, washed in cold water, and steeped in oil, is used for female complaints, and to allay inflammations of the uterus. Procidence of the uterus is reduced by using this wool in the form of a fumigation. Greasy wool, used as a plaster and as a pessary, brings away the dead fœtus, and arrests uterine discharges. Bites inflicted by a mad dog are plugged with unwashed wool, and the application being removed at the end of seven days. Applied with cold water, it is a cure for agnails: steeped in a mixture of boiling nitre, sulphur, oil, vinegar, and tar, and applied twice a day, as warm as possible, it allays pains in the loins. By making ligatures with unwashed rams’ wool about the extremities of the limbs, bleeding is effectually stopped.

In all cases, the wool most esteemed is that from the neck of the animal; the best kinds of wool being those of Galatia, Tarentum, Attica, and Miletus. For excoriations, blows, bruises, contusions, crushes, galls, falls, pains in the head and other parts, and for inflammation of the stomach, unwashed wool is applied, with a mixture of vinegar and oil of roses. Reduced to ashes, it is applied to contusions, wounds, and burns, and forms an ingredient in ophthalmic compositions. It is employed, also, for fistulas and suppurations of the ears. For this last purpose, some persons take the wool as it is shorn, while others pluck it from the fleece; they then cut off the ends of it, and after drying and carding it, lay it in pots of unbaked earth, steep it well in honey, and burn it. Others, again, arrange it in layers alternately with chips of torch-pine, [See B. xvi. c. 19.] and, after sprinkling it with oil, set fire to it: they then rub the ashes into small vessels with the hands, and let them settle in water there. This operation is repeated and the water changed several times, until at last the ashes are found to be slightly astringent, without the slightest pungency; upon which, they are put by for use, being possessed of certain caustic properties, [“Smectica” is suggested by Gesner, Hist. Anim., as a better reading than “septica.”] and extremely useful as a detergent the eyelids.