PERCID^ OR PEECHES. 129 



an oily-coloured gall, both whoUy incommensurate with 

 his size (which is seldom above a foot long), and occu- 

 pying together a large tract of the cavity of the interior. 

 The redundancy of this creature's bile was so well known 

 in Greece, that Menander introduced it as a subject for 

 pleasantry in his comedies. ' Til make you more bilious 

 than a caUionymus/ says one of his dramatis personse ; 

 and ' unless you budge, and quickly, so as to stir up the 

 bile of this caUionymus,' words occurring in a fragment 

 from another comedian, show that this peculiarity of the 

 fish had passed into a proverbial byword, to indicate per- 

 sons of choleric or morose temperament. Great use, or 

 perhaps we should rather say, large employment, was 

 made of this fish's gall. Galen, writing ex professo on 

 the subject of bUe, takes occasion to observe, while com- 

 paring the difierent sorts, ' whereas that procured from 

 the ox is more remedial than many others, it is inferior 

 to the hyena's, which again is Surpassed by the gall of 

 the caUionymus.' He employed this (where we employ 

 so successfuUy the nitrate of silver solution) for conjunc- 

 tivitis, or sore eyesj and mixing it with fennel-juice, 

 Attic honey, and hyena's or viper's or goat's or tortoise's 

 gaU, gave his fiat for a mess, with which he and his pa- 

 tients appear to have been perfectly satisfied. Longi- 

 nus's far-famed instance and iUustration of the sublime, 

 from Genesis, ' Fiat lux' (let there be light), wiU be fami- 

 Uar doubtless to most of our readers. But every sub- 

 Ume has its bathos ; and in direct antithesis to his quo- 

 tation might be cited almost aU the first fiats of Hygeia's 

 oracles. 



When med'eine, heavenly maid, was young, 



WMle yet in early Greece she sung, 



which have descended to us, both from Athens and 

 Rome, and are, for the most part, instances of the very 

 subUme of the absurd. Even now that we have mended 

 our medicines, there is stiU something ludicrous sticking 



g3 



