BOOK XXIII. xxin. 41-44 



checking looseness of the bowels should not drink at 

 all at meals and but sparingly after. To drink while 

 fasting is a recent innovation that is very injurious to 

 those absorbed in business and trying to keep their 

 mind actively on the alert. In order to induce sleep, 

 however, and to banish worries wine was so taken 

 long ago, as we see from Homer's " Helena, who 

 served wine before food. So too it passed into a 

 proverb that " wine befogs the wits." It is to wine 

 that we men should attribute the fact that of animals 

 we alone drink when we are not thirsty. To drink 

 water at intervals during bouts is very helpful, as it is 

 also to drink it after a prolonged bout. Intoxication 

 indeed is immediately banished by a draught of cold 

 water. Hesiod ^ recommends the use of strong '• 

 draughts of wine for twenty days before and twenty 

 davs after the rising of the Dog-star. Neat wine 

 indeed is a remedy for poison bv hemlock, coriander, 

 aconite, mistletoe, opium, mercury, for the wounds 

 of bees, wasps, hornets, spiders, snakes and scorpions, 

 and for all poisons that harm by chilling, especially 

 for those of the haemorrhois, the prester, and of 

 tree fungi ; also for flatulence and gnawings of the 

 hypochondria, for violent vomitings from the 

 stomach, and if the belly or intestines suffer from 

 catarrh ; for dysentery, and for sweats after prolonged 

 coughing, while, for eye-fluxes the wine should be 

 slightly diluted. For cardiac ** affections it is beneficial 

 to apply to the left breast neat wine on a sponge ; but 

 for all these purposes the best to use is white wine 

 that is growing old. It is aiso useful to foment the 

 testicles with warm wine, and administered through 



diseaise, some form of syncope or collapse. The latter seems 

 to be the meaning in § 50, and therefore perhaps here also. 



443 



