TORPEDO-FISH—SOCRATES—GOUT 181 
present-day sense of the word, as some writers imagine. The 
comparison to the fish in Meno 8oa illustrates the benumbing 
effect of the Socratic method on the thought and talk (rjv 
Yuxnv kai 76 ordua vapk®) of Meno (and others), so that he was 
peotoc atopiac, and reduced to silence (ovK Exw 6 te amokpivwpai). 
If limited to the electric fire which flashed from his eyes, 
the comparison is complimentary to the philosopher, but, if 
applied to the whole face, is, even if true, quite the reverse. 
The thirty odd busts still extant of Socrates hand down to us 
an ugly, flat face with pig’s-eyes, all characteristic of the 
Torpedo narke.} 
fBlian (IX. 14) indulges in wondrous stories gleaned from 
his mother and viris peritis of the permeation of the electric 
shock. Did one but touch the net in which the fish was taken, 
lo! he was cramp-bound. If some enquiring observer placed 
a pregnant torpedo in a vase of sea-water, his fate, did but a 
drop fall on leg or arm, was similar, but the fish, even though 
this virtue had gone out of her, in due season became a mother ! 
According to Mr. Lones, Oppian, lian, to whom (V. 37) 
we owe the specific for immunity when handling the fish, 
viz. “ the liquor of Cyrene,’ Theophrastus, all exaggerate the 
powers of the Torpedo. 
A most interesting account is given in Athenzus (VII. 95), 
who avers that the shock was not produced by all parts of the 
fish’s body, but by certain parts only, and that Diphilus of 
Laodicea had proved this by a long series of experiments.” 
According to Galen and Dioscorides the shock, whence or how- 
ever obtained, relieved chronic headache, while a contemporary 
of the latter recommends a person suffering from gout in the 
feet to stand ‘“ bare-legged”’ on the shore, and apply the 
Torpedo. 
As the German and Austrian watering places are still under 
a cloud, we may yet see on the shores of Italy bands of gouty 
1 For a profoundly interesting study of the extant portrait-busts of 
Socrates, see A. Hekler, Greek and Roman Portraits (London, 1912), p. xi. f., 
with plates 19, 20, 21. 
2 ‘The Torpedo was one of the food fishes of the ancients, and is represented 
with other fish on several of the Campanian-ware fish plates to be seen at the 
British Museum, e.g. Cat. Vases, vol. iv., p. 121, F. 268, which shows the 
small well in the centre of the plate used for fish sauce. 
