Chap. 25.] BEMEDIES DEBITED TfiOM POULTHY. 39 'J 



this bird about them will be safe, not only from serpents, but 

 from wild beasts as well, and will have nothing to fear from 

 the attacks of robbers or from the wrath of kings. 



CHAP. 25. REMEDIES DERIVED FROM POULTRY. 



The flesh of cocks and capons, applied warm the moment it 

 has been plucked from the bones, neutralizes the venom of 

 serpents ; and the brains, taken in wine, are productive of a 

 similar effect. The people of Parthia, however, prefer apply- 

 ing a hen's brains to the wound. Poultry broth, too, is highly 

 celebrated as a cure, and is found marvellously useful in many 

 other cases. Panthers and lions will never touch persons who 

 have been rubbed with it, more particularly if it has been 

 flavoured with garlic. The broth that is made of an old cock 

 is more relaxing to the bowels ; it is very good also for chronic 

 fevers, numbness of the limbs, cold shiverings and maladies of 

 the joints, pains also in the head, defluxions of the eyes, 

 flatulency, sickness at stomach, incipient tenesmus, liver 

 complaints, diseases of the kidneys, affections of the bladder, 

 indigestion, and asthma. Hence there are several recipes for 

 preparing this broth ; it being most efficacious when boiled up 

 with sea-cabbage, 34 salted tunny, 35 capers, parsley, the plant 

 mercurialis, 36 polypodium, 37 or dill. The best plan, however, 

 is to boil the cock or capon with the plants above-mentioned in 

 three congii of water, down to three semi-sextarii ; after which 

 it should be left to cool in the open air, and given at the proper 

 moment, just after an emetic has been administered. 



And here I must not omit to mention one marvellous fact, 

 even though it bears no reference to medicine : if the flesh of 

 poultry is mingled with gold 38 in a state of fusion, it will 

 absorb the metal and consume it, thus showing that it acts 

 as a poison upon gold. If young twigs are made up into a 

 collar and put round a cock's neck, it will never crow. 



34 See B. xxii. c. 33. 



35 "Cybium." See B. ix. c. 18. Dioscorides says the plant cnecos, de- 

 scribed by Pliny in B. xxi. c. 107. 



36 See B. xxv. c. 18, arid B. xxvii. c. 77. 



37 See B. xvi. c. 92, and B. xxvi. cc. 37, 66. 



33 Hereupon peradventure it is that in collices and cockbroths we use 

 to seeth pieces of gold, with an opinion to make them thereby more re- 

 storative." Holland. 



