80 PEOSE HALIEUTICS. 



The closing flesh that instant ceased to glow, 

 The wound to ranil^ and the blood to flow. 



Pliny had said many centuries ago the very same thmg 

 of the sanatory virtues of the liver against the mischiefs 

 caused by the tail of the ray ; affording the clearest 

 evidence that homoeopathy is no new, but, quantum va- 

 leat, an old effete Latin inanity; just as again the heroic 

 treatment of epidemic fever by wine called Bnmonian, 

 after Dr. Brown, is taught incidentally by Sophocles, 

 and should be called Sophoclean.* But not only was 

 the liver of this skate thus early employed in substance, 

 the oil obtained from it was also much iu vogue in vari- 

 ous hepatic affections : Pliny speaks too of another oil 

 extracted from the dolphin's hver, and administered be- 

 tween the paroxysms of ague, as a potent antidote ; and 

 he adds, that the same mixed with wine (there are 

 ricorsif even in the formularies of prescribing, for cod- 

 liver on is still admiaistered in wine) was an excellent 

 remedy in dropsy. Thus, though the Romans did not 

 use the identical oil we do, nor prescribe it for the same 

 diseases, they used one which was probably found just 

 as eflBcacious.f In confirmation of which it may be 

 mentioned that Dr. Bardsley's first experiments were 



* An epidemic fever is raging at Thebes, and Bacchus is invited 

 by the Chorus to come and cure it : 

 Kai vvv, CHS ^laias 



€)(^ETai irdvdrjfios d^a ttoKis eVi votrov 

 ^oXelv KaOapa-la TroSt Ilapvrja-iav 

 virep kKltvv. 

 t Even the mode of obtaining the oil in question, viz. ' by 

 heating and softening the viscus in earthenware vessels over a 

 slow fire, and skim m i n g it ofi" as it rose to the surface," is, we be- 

 lieve, that at present had recourse to with the Kke view in Scot- 

 land. 



J Besides proving a most valuable ally to the physician in dys- 

 peptic, rheumatic, and some other ailments, in which itspowers are 



