PEBCIDiE OR PERCHES. 119 



shunned as that of the weever ; but as this perch is pro- 

 nounced on all hands to be excellent food, epicures 

 do not mind paying handsomely for the risks run by 

 others in its capture. We hear much more frequently, 

 however, of the piquancy of the spines than of that of 

 the flesh ; and the number, diversity, and strangeness of 

 old and more recent remedies attest at once the many 

 mischiefs they occasioned, and the credulity of mankind, 

 who, ever sceptical in the wrong place, have in aU ages 



SwaJlow'd nonsense and a lie, 

 With greediness and gluttony. 



Pliny's recipe was a glass of absinthe, no disagreeable 

 remedy, if they made it in ancient Rome as it is now 

 prepared in modern Paris. Galen, Dioscorides, and 

 many other writers, confidently recommend applying 

 the culprit himself, if at hand, over the surface of the 

 wound. Paul of ^gina advises that the patient quafl" 

 a light tisane thickened with his brains ; Celsus, to rub 

 the injured part, and then to fasten on a fillet of the raw 

 fish epidermically. Avicenna recommends a poultice of 

 leeks ; Serapio, a plaster of dried figs and ground barley. 

 Various other less renowned authorities prescribe fo- 

 mentations of sulphur and vinegar, briony in decoction, 

 or salves made of the crushed Uver. Rondolet writes 

 that the French sailors have recourse to the bruised 

 leaves of the lentiscus, and consider this their sheet-an- 

 chor. Lastly, Bernardinus Castellata, of Genoa, (whom 

 his countryman Aldrovandi describes as a ' vir cum 

 humanissimus tum secretorum naturae indefatigabihs 

 investigator,') announces, as the result of his 'indefa- 

 tigable investigation,' that nothing is so sovereign in a 

 remedial capacity here as a small species of thlaspi (shep- 

 herd's purse) found growing by the sea-shore; 'but,' 

 adds the cautious author, who has been at great pains 

 to bring aU the above authorities together, ' it should be 



