276 PLINY'S NATURAL HISTORY. [Book XXVIII. 



by pretty nearly uniform testimony, and to pay more attention, 

 to scrupulous exactness than to copiousness of diction. 



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

 whereas I have already described the natures of the various 

 animals, and the discoveries 2 due to them respectively for, in 

 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 myself 

 to the remedial properties which are found in the animal 

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

 the former portion of this work. These additional details 

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

 connexion with those whieh precede. 



CHAP. 2. REMEDIES DERIVED FROM MAN. 



We will begin then with man, and our first enquires will 

 be into the resources which he provides for himself a subject 

 replete with boundless difficulties at the very outset. 3 



Epileptic patients are in the habit of drinking the blood 

 even of gladiators, draughts teeming with life, 4 as it were ; a 

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

 the same arena, inspires uswitb horror at the spectacle! And 

 yet these persons, forsooth, consider it a most effectual cure 

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

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

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

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

 wild beast ! Others there are, again, who make the marrow 5 

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

 research ! 



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

 enlarged upon the distinctive flavours of each one of the viscera 

 and members of the human body, pursuing their researches 

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



- See B. viii. c. 97, et seq,, and B. xxv. c. 89, et seq. 



* See B. xxviii. c. 3. 



4 This practice is mentioned with reprobation by Celsus and Tertullian. 

 It was continued, however, in some degree through the middle ages, and 

 Louis XV. was accused by his people of taking baths of infants' blood to 

 repair his premature decrepitude. 



3 In recent times, Guettard, a French practitioner, recommended human 

 marrow as an emollient liniment. 



