INTRODUCTION 



a cure. By the tinie of Pliny, however, the use of 

 drugs was much more in favour with professional 

 physicians, and very comrnon indeed among the 

 amateur doctors who treated themselves and their 

 families when they fell sick. Sometimes modern 

 medicine approves of the prescriptions given in the 

 Natural History, but for the most part they are of 

 little or no value, and occasionally even dangerous. 

 Amulets and other charms, often mentioned, were 

 evidently popular, but Phny himself seems on the 

 whole to be non-committal as to their efficacy, 

 altliough he condemns magic in the first chapters of 

 Book XXX. 



This faith in drugs and charms may be, at least 

 in part, due to the probable increased prevalence of 

 malaria in the flrst century a.d. Ancient medicine 

 was powerless against it, and its victims betook 

 themselves to drugs, at the same time developing a 

 timid inferiority complex with regard to the pre- 

 disposing causes — chill, exposure and fatigue. Among 

 the Moralia of Plutarch is an essay on keeping well 

 (de sanitate tuenda praecepta). It consists chiefly of 

 rules for avoiding " fever " by abstaining from 

 excess or strain of all kinds. In fact it seems as 

 though the old Greek cult of physical fitness and 

 beauty — for there was a science of health as well as 

 of healing — had been replaced by something very 

 near to valetudinarianism. 



There is at least one ingredient of the PHnian 

 remedies that must have been of great value. Honey 

 appears again and again in both potions and external 

 applications, full use being made of its heaUng 

 powers. The superseding of honey by sugar has 

 been by no means an unmixed blessing. 



