VIPERA CERASTES. 71 



other cases. The Greek physician Craterus, mentioned so often 

 by Cicero, in his Epistles to Atticus, cured, as Porphyrins relates, 

 a miserable slave whose skin in a strange manner fell off from his 

 bones, by advising him to feed on Viper's flesh, in the manner of 

 fish. Antonius Musa, physician to Octavius Cgesar (Augustus), is 

 said by Pliny to have ordered the eating of vipers in the case of 

 otherwise incurable ulcers, which by this method were quickly 

 healed. Galen says, that those who are afflicted with elephantiasis 

 are wonderfully relieved by eating viper's flesh dressed like eels ; 

 and relates very remarkable cures of this disease performed by 

 viper wine. Aretceus, who probably lived about the same time 

 with Galen, and who of all the ancients has most accurately 

 described the above disorder, commends, as Craterus did, the 

 eating of vipers instead of fish in the same diseases. In France 

 and Italy, the broth, jelly, and flesh is much esteemed as a resto- 

 rative medicine. 



XIII. 



VIPERA CERASTES. 



Horned Piper, or Cerastes. 



Spec. Char. Body pale yellowish or greyish, with 

 distant subovate transverse brown spots ; male with 

 a pointed and solid horn on cacli eyelid ; length two 

 feet. 



Cerastes ex Lybia ; Aldrov. Serp. p. 175 Coluber Cerastes; Lin. Si/st. Nat. 



p. 370; Ellis, Phil. Trans, vi t. 47. f . 1 ; Shaw, Zool. iii. p. 3K>, t. 10. 



Coluber Cornutus ; Hasselrj . Act. Ups. 1750. Cerastes; Bruce, Trav. vii. 



p. 292, t. 40. Coluber Egypticus ; La Ctpcde. Vipcra Cerastes ; Ueo/f'r. Kept. 



Egypt, t. 6, f. :). 

 La Viprc Ceraste, Fr. ; Die Gehornle, Ger. 



By the kind liberality of Mr. Bell, New Broad Street, City, I am, 

 in the Medical Zoology, enabled to present the reader with a correct 



