276 PLINY's NATUUA.L HISTORY. [Book XXYIII 



b)' pretty nearly uniform testimony, and to pay more attentioi 

 to scrupulous exactness thtm to copiousness of diction. 



It is highly necessary, however, to advertise the reader, tha 

 whereas I have already described the natures of the varioii 

 animals, and the discoveries^ due to them respectively — for, ii 

 fact, they have been no less serviceable in former times in dis 

 covering remedies, than they are at the present day in provid 

 ing us with them — it is my present intention to confine mysel 

 to tlie remedial properties which are found in the anima 

 world, a subject which has not been altogether lost sight of h 

 the former portion of this work. These additional detail 

 therefore, though of a different nature, must still be read ii 

 connexion with those which precede. 



CHAP. 2. EEMEDIES DERIVED FROM MAN. 



We will begin then with man, and our first enquires M'il 

 be into the resources which he provides for himself — a subjec 

 replete with boundless difiiculties at the very outset.^ 



Epileptic patients are in the habit of drinking the blooc 

 even of gladiators, draughts teeming with life,* as it were; t 

 thing that, when we see it done by the wild beasts even, upoi 

 tlje same arena, inspires us with horror at the spectacle! Anc 

 yet these persons, forsooth, consider it a most effectual cur( 

 for their disease, to quaff the warm, breathing, blood from mar 

 himself, and, as they apply their mouth to the wound, to draTs 

 forth his very life ; and this, though it is regarded as an ad 

 of impiety to apply the human lips to the wound even of i 

 wild beast ! Others there are, again, who make the marrov/ 

 of the leg-bones, and the brains of infants, the objects of theii 

 research ! 



Among the Greek writers, too, there are not a few who hav( 

 enlarged upon the distinctive flavours of each one of the viscert 

 and members of the human body, pursuing their researches 

 to the very parings of the nails ! as though, forsooth, it coulc 



- See B. viii. c. 97, et seq., and B. x.\v. c. 89, ei xeq. 



•* See B, sxviii. c. 3. 



* This practico is mentioned with reprobation hy Celsiis and Tertullian 

 It w;is continued, however, in sonii! dei^rec through the middle ages, anc 

 Luuis XV. was accused by his people of taking baths of infants' blood t( 

 repair his premature decrepitude. 



'" In recent times, (»uettard, a French practitioner, recommended huraar 

 mairow as an emollient linijuent. 



