354 PLINY'S NATURAL HISTORY. [Book XXVIII. 



There are some persons who recommend the patient to eat 

 the heart of a black he-ass in the open air with bread, upon 

 the first or second day of the moon : others, again, prescribe 

 the flesh of that animal, and others the blood, diluted with 

 vinegar, and taken for forty days together. Some mix horse- 

 stale for this purpose, with smithy water fresh from the forge, 

 employing the same mixture for the cure of delirium. Epilepsy 

 is also treated with mares' milk, or the excrescences from a 

 horse's legs, taken in honey and vinegar. The magicians 

 highly recommend goats' flesh, grilled upon a funeral pile ; as 

 also the suet of that animal, boiled with an equal quantity of 

 bull's gall, and kept in the gall-bladder; care being taken not 

 to let it touch the ground, and the patient swallowing it in 

 water, standing aloft. 8i The smell arising from a goat's horns 

 or deer's antlers, burnt, efficiently detects the presence of 

 epilepsy. 



In cases where persons are suddenly paralyzed, the urine of 

 an ass's foal, applied to the body with nard, is very useful, it is 

 said. 



'CHAP. 64. REMEDIES FOR JAUNDICE. 



For the cure of jaundice, the ashes of a stag's antlers are 

 employed ; or the blood of an ass's foal, taken in wine. The 

 first dung, 85 too, that has been voided by the foal after its 

 birth, taken in wine, in pieces the size of a bean, will effect a 

 cure by the end of three days. The dung of a new-born colt 

 is possessed of a similar efficacy. 



"^~ CHAP. 65. REMEDIES FOR BROKEN BONES. 



For broken bones, a sovereign remedy is the ashes of the 

 jaw-bone of a wild boar or swine : boiled bacon, too, tied round 

 the broken bone, unites it with marvellous rapidity. For 

 fractures of the ribs, goats' dung, applied in old wine, is extolled 

 as the grand remedy, being possessed in a high degree of 

 aperient, extractive, and healing properties. 



CHAP. 66. REMEDIES FOR FEVERS. 



Deer's flesh, as already 86 stated, is a febrifuge. Periodical 

 84 "Potum vero ex aqua sublime." The true reading and the meaning 



are equally doubtful. 85 Spoken of as " polea" in c. 57. 



86 In B. viii. c. 50. Because the animal itself was supposed to be free 



from fever. 



