Chap. 2.] REMEDIES DESTVED raOM MAX, 277 



possibly be accounted the pursuit of health for man to make 

 himself a wild beast, and so deserve to contract disease from 

 the very remedies he adopts for avoiding it. Most righteously, 

 by Hercules ! if such attempts are all in vain, is he disap- 

 pointed of his cure ! To examine human entrails is deemed 

 an act of impiety f what then must it be to devour them r 



Say, Osthanes,'' who was it that first devised these practices; 

 for it is thee that I accuse, thou uprooter of all human laws, 

 thou inventor of these monstrosities ; devised, no doubt, with 

 the view that mankind might not forget thy name ! Who was 

 it that first thought of devouring each member of the human 

 body ? By what conjectural motives was he induced ? What 

 can possibly have been the origin of such a system of medicine as 

 this ? Who was it that thus made the very poisons less baneful 

 than the antidotes prescribed for them ? Granted that barbarous 

 and outlandish tribes first devised such practices, must the 

 men of Greece, too, adopt these as arts of their own ? 



We read, for instance, in the memoirs of Democritus, still 

 extant, that for some diseases, the skull of a malefactor is most 

 efficacious, while for the treatment of others, that of one who 

 has been a friend or guest is required. Apollonius, again, in- 

 forms us in his waitings, that the most effectual remedy for 

 tooth-ache is to scarify the gums with the tooth of a man who 

 has died a violent death ; and, according to Miletus, human gall 

 is a cure for cataract.^ For epilepsy, Artemon has prescribed 

 water drawn from a spring in the night, and drunk from the 

 skull of a man who has been slain, and whose body remains 

 unburnt. From the skull, too, of a man who had been hanged, 

 Antaeus made pills that were to be an antidote to the bite of a 

 mad dog. Even more than this, man has resorted to similar re- 

 medies for the cure of four-footed beasts even — for tympanitis in 

 oxen, for instance, the horns have been perforated, and human 

 bones inserted ; and when swine have been found to be diseased, 



^ Hence, as Ajasson remarks, the ignorance of anatomy displayed by tlie 

 ancients. 



■' For further particulars as to Osthanes, see B. xxix. c. 80, and 15. xxx. 

 cc, 5 and 6; also cc. 19 and 77 of the present Book. The reading, how- 

 ever, is very doubtful. 



^ " Oculoruni suffusiones." As Ajasson says, the remedy here mentioned 

 reminds us of the more harmless one used by Tobias for the cure of the 

 bUndness of his father Tobit. 



