Chap. 38.] REMEDIES FOE DISEASES OF THE EYES. 415 



for diseases of the eyes. Some persons enclose a green lizard 

 in a new earthen vessel, together with nine of the small stones 

 known as " cinsedia," 7 which are usually attached to the body 

 for tumours in the groin. Upon each of these stones they 

 make nine 8 marks, and remove one from the vessel daily, 

 taking care, when the ninth day is come, to let the lizard go, 

 the stones being kept as a remedy for affections of the eyes. 

 Others, again, blind a green lizard, and after putting some 

 earth beneath it, enclose it in a glass vessel, with some small 

 rings of solid iron or gold. When they find, by looking 

 through the glass, that the lizard has recovered its sight, 9 they 

 set it at liberty, and keep the rings as a preservative against 

 ophthalmia. Others employ the ashes of a lizard's head as 

 a substitute for antimony, for the treatment of eruptions of the 

 eyes. Some recommend the ashes of the green lizard with a long 

 neck that is usually found in sandy soils, as an application for 

 incipient defluxions of the eyes, and for glaucoma. They say, 

 too, that if the eyes of a weasel are extracted with a pointed 

 instrument, its sight will return; the same use being made of it 

 as of the lizards and rings above mentioned. The right eye 

 of a serpent, worn as an amulet, is very good, it is said, for 

 defluxions of the eyes, due care being taken to set the serpent 

 at liberty after extracting the eye. For continuous watering 10 

 of the eyes, the ashes of a spotted lizard's head, applied with 

 antimony, are remarkably efficacious. 



The cobweb of the common fly-spider, that which lines its 

 hole more particularly, applied to the forehead across the 

 temples, in a compress of some kind or other, is said to be 

 marvellously useful for the cure of defluxions of the eyes : the 

 web must be taken, however, and applied by the hands of a 

 boy who has not arrived at the years of puberty ; the boy, 

 too, must not show himself to the patient for three days, and 

 during those three days neither of them must touch the 

 ground with his feet uncovered. The white spider 11 with 



7 See B. xxxvii. c. 56. 



8 The mention of this number denotes the Eastern origin of this re- 

 medy, Ajasson remarks. 



9 See Note 6 above. 10 " Lacrymantibus sine fine oculis." 



11 Ajasson remarks, that Pliny has given here a much more exact de- 

 scription of the varieties of the Spider, than in the Eleventh Book. The 

 learned Commentator gives an elaborate discussion, of eighteen panes, on 

 the varieties of the Spider as known to the ancients in common with modern 

 naturalists. 



