18 Flint's natural history. [Book XXXII. 



the broth is used, being taken by persons apprehensive of 

 paralysis or of diseases of the joints. The gall, too, is found 

 very useful for carrying off pituitous humours and corrupt 

 blood : taken in cold water, it has an astringent effect upon 

 the bowels. 



There is a fourth kind of tortoise, which frequents rivers. 

 "When used for its remedial properties, the shell of the animal 

 is removed, and the fat separated from the flesh and beaten up 

 with the plant aizoiim,'' in combination with unguent and lily 

 seed : a preparation highly effectual, it is said, for the cure of 

 quartan fevers, the patient being rubbed with it all over, the 

 head excepted, just before the paroxysms come on, and then 

 well wrapped up and made to drink hot water. It is stated 

 also, that to obtain as much fat as possible, the tortoise should 

 be taken on the fifteenth day of the moon, the patient being 

 anointed on the sixteenth. The blood of this tortoise, dropt, 

 by way of embrocation, upon the region of the brain, allays 

 head-ache ; it is curative also of scrofulous sores. Some per- 

 sons recommend that the tortoise should be laid^ upon its back 

 and its head cut off with a copper knife, the blood being re- 

 ceived in a new earthen vessel ; and they assure us that the 

 blood of any kind of tortoise, when thus obtained, will be an 

 excellent liniment for the cure of erysipelas, running ulcers 

 upon the head, and warts. Upon the same authority, too, we 

 are assured that the dung of any kind of tortoise is good for 

 the removal of inflammatory tumours. Incredible also as 

 the statement is, we find it asserted by some, that ships^ make 

 way more slowly when they have the right foot of a tortoise 

 on board. 



CHAP. 15. — REMEDIES DERIVED FROM THE AQUATIC ANIMALS| 

 CLASSIFIED ACCORDING TO THE RESPECTIVE DISEASES. 



"We will now proceed to classify the various remedies de- 

 rived from the aquatic animals, according to the several dis- 

 eases ; not that we are by any means unaware that an expo- 

 sition of all the properties of each animal at once, would be 

 more to the reader's taste, and more likely to excite his admi- 



' Our Houseleek. See B. xxv. c. 102. 



® Because it is then powerless, and can make no eflfort to rise. 



3 An absurd story, founded, no doubt, on the extremely slow pace of 

 the tortoise. Ajasson remarks that it is the fresh-water tortoise, more 

 particularly, that is so slow in its movements. 



