TORPEDO-FISH— SOCRATES— GOUT i8i 



present-day sense of the word, as some writers imagine. The 

 comparison to the fish in Meno 8oA illustrates the benumbing 

 effect of the Socratic method on the thought and talk (ttjv 

 rpvxnv Koi TO (TTOfxa vapKU)) of Meno (and others), so that he was 

 fiiCFTOQ airopiag, and reduced to silence {ovk t^w 6 tl airoKpivwuat). 



If limited to the electric fire which flashed from his eyes, 

 the comparison is complimentary to the philosopher, but, if 

 applied to the whole face, is, even if true, quite the reverse. 

 The thirty odd busts still extant of Socrates hand down to us 

 an ugly, flat face with pig's-eyes, all characteristic of the 

 Torpedo narked 



vEhan (IX. 14) indulges in wondrous stories gleaned from 

 his mother and viris peritis of the permeation of the electric 

 shock. Did one but touch the net in which the fish was taken, 

 lo ! he was cramp-bound. If some enquiring observer placed 

 a pregnant torpedo in a vase of sea-water, his fate, did but a 

 drop fall on leg or arm, was similar, but the fish, even though 

 this virtue had gone out of her, in due season became a mother ! 



According to Mr. Lones, Oppian, ^lian, to whom (V. 37) 

 we owe the specific for immunity when handling the fish, 

 viz. " the liquor of Cyrene," Theophrastus, all exaggerate the 

 powers of the Torpedo. 



A most interesting account is given in Athenaeus (VII. 95), 

 who avers that the shock was not produced by all parts of the 

 fish's body, but by certain parts only, and that Diphilus of 

 Laodicea had proved this by a long series of experiments.'- 

 According to Galen and Dioscorides the shock, whence or how- 

 ever obtained, reheved chronic headache, while a contemporary 

 of the latter recommends a person suffering from gout in the 

 feet to stand " bare-legged " on the shore, and apply the 

 Torpedo. 



As the German and Austrian watering places are still under 

 a cloud, we may yet see on the shores of Italy bands of gouty 



1 For a profoundly interesting study of the extant portrait-busts of 

 Socrates, see A. Hekler, Greek and Roman Portraits (London, 1912), p. xi. f., 

 with plates 19, 20, 21. • i. j 



2 The Torpedo was one of the food fishes of the ancients, and is represented 

 with other fish on several of the Campanian-ware fish plates to be seen at the 

 British Museum, e.g. Cat. Vases, vol. iv., p. 121, F. 268, which shows the 

 small well in the centre of the plate used for fish sauce. . 



