380 pltnt's natural history. [Book XXIX. 



tors, I can readily imagine ; but it was not these inconveni- 

 ences that Cato had in view, when he spoke thus strongly in 

 condemnation of the medical art. 



''Theriace"^ is the name given to a preparation devised by 

 luxury ; a composition formed of six hundred °^ different in- 

 gredients ; and this while Nature has bestowed upon us such 

 numbers of remedies, each of which would have fully answered 

 the purpose employed by itself I The Mithridatic^^ antidote 

 is composed of four and fifty ingredients, none of which are 

 used in exactly the same proportion, and the quantity pre- 

 scribed 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 under- 

 stand this branch of their profession ; and I have ascertained 

 that it is a common thing for them to put mineral vermilion^' 

 in their medicines, a rank poison, as I shall have occasion ®° 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^^ 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,^' a preparation for a wrestling match, by 

 rights, but which, these men pretend, was invented as a preser- 

 vative of health ; the use of hot baths, which are necessarj'-, 



=•> The origin of our word " treacle." See B. xx. c. 100, and Note 97. 



57 Used as a round number, like our expression " ten thousand." 



^ See B. xxiii. c. 77, and B. xxv. c. 26. 



59 "Minium." This red lead had the name of " cinnabaris nativa," 

 whence the error. ^ In B. xxxiii. c. 38. 



^' As tending to effeminacy, or undermining the constitution. 



«2 See B. xxviii. c. 13. 



