18 PLINY'S NATUBAL HISTORY. [Book XXIV. 



honey to the tonsillary glands, it facilitates expectoration. 

 Applied topically, it acts as a detergent upon ulcers, and 

 makes new flesh. Mixed with raisins and axle-grease, it 

 forms a detergent plaster for carbuncles and putrid ulcers, and, 

 with pine-bark or sulphur, for serpiginous sores. Pitch has 

 been administered too by some, in doses of one cyathus, for 

 phthisis and inveterate coughs. It heals chaps of the feet and 

 rectum, inflamed tumours, and malformed nails ; and used as a 

 fumigation, it is curative of indurations and derangements of 

 the uterus, and of lethargy. Boiled with barley-meal and the 

 urine of a youth who has not arrived at puberty, it causes 

 scrofulous sores to suppurate. Dry pitch is used also for the 

 cure of alopecy. For affections of the mamillae, Bruttian 

 pitch is warmed in wine with fine spelt meal, and applied as 

 hot as can be borne. 



CHAP. 24. PISSEL^ON AND PALIMPISSA : SIXTEEN REMEDIES. 



"We have already 17 described the way in which liquid pitch 

 and the oil known as pisselaeon are made. Some persons boil 

 the pitch over again, and give it the name of " palimpissa." 18 For 

 quinzy 19 and affections of the uvula, liquid pitch is employed 

 internally. It is used also for the cure of ear-ache, for the 

 improvement of the sight, and as a salve for the lips ; and is 

 employed for hysterical suffocations, inveterate coughs, profuse 

 expectorations, spasms, nervousness, opisthotony, paralysis, 

 and pains in the sinews. It is a very excellent remedy too for 

 itch in dogs and beasts of burden. 



CHAP. 25. PISSASPH ALTOS : TWO REMEDIES. 



There is pissasph altos too, a natural production of the 

 territory of the Apolloniates, 20 and consisting of pitch mixed 



17 In B. xvi. c. 22, and B. xv. c. 7. 

 19 "Pitch boiled over again." 



19 Fee says, that this statement is quite beyond all belief. Indeed there 

 is little doubt that tar taken internally for quinzy, would only tend to 

 aggravate the complaint. He states that a solution of tar in water is some- 

 times used internally with success for pulmonary phthisis. Bishop 

 Berkeley wrote his Siris, on the virtues of Tar- water as a medicament, 

 having been indebted to it for his recovery from an attack of colic. 



20 See B. xvi. c. 23. His description here is faulty, it being solely a 

 natural pitch or mineral bitumen, without any admixture of vegetable 

 pitch. Vitruvius calls this pissasphalt, pitch ; but Julian, more correctly, 



