ANIMALS AND MEDICINE. 



By HULWIDGEON. 

 II. — UNGULATA {.continued). 



OAR. — Apart 

 from his rela- 

 tives, the do- 

 mestic swine and 

 the East Indian 

 stone-yielder, the 

 European wild 

 boar was sup- 

 posed to possess 

 some peculiar 

 merits. " The 

 boar's bladder," 

 writes Howard, 

 vol. i. p. 358, 

 " has been re- 

 puted by physi- 

 cians a specific 

 for the epilepsy ; 

 and the tush of 

 the wild boar 

 still passes with some as of great efficacy in quinsies 

 and epilepsies." 



Bate gives a Testes apri prccparati (p. 639), which 

 was obtained from a "boar or wild boar" and pre- 

 pared after the manner of that mentioned under 

 Horse ; like which, it was administered for epilepsy, 

 colic, and bowel disorders. Of this composition 

 Salmon remarks: " They have all the virtues of the 

 former (the T. eqtti p?-ap.), and, in my opinion, are 

 somewhat the more powerful." He gave ^-scruple 

 doses, in a vehicle, to women for fits. 



Hippopotamus. — The semi-apocryphal "sea- 

 horse " was renowned as the producer of the whitest 

 and most enduring of white ivories, in which capacity 

 it serves our dentists down to this day. But at the 

 time I write of, Behemoth itself was known but 

 indifferently to the profession, and many learned 

 members, while compounding actual products of the 

 animal, must have accepted their pretended source in 

 blind faith or, privately, have regarded it as a myth. 

 No. 337. — January 1893. 



The ridiculously inaccurate accounts of it, slavishly 

 borrowed from Aristotle and Pliny, which served 

 until the eighteenth century to stand for its natural 

 history, could hardly fail to be discredited by men of 

 education and intelligence. Our "Nature Display'd" 

 (p. 244), treating of it from later authorities, altogether 

 avoids a personal description. The hippopotamus is 

 " a very large amphibious animal, who lives at the 

 bottom of the Nile and Niger, from whence he rises, 

 not by any effort of swimming, but by crawling with 

 his four feet, when he goes to feed in the meadows or 

 even the tops of mountains. He grazes in the 

 herbage, and then returns to his station in the water, 

 where; he is in a perpetual state of war with the 

 crocodile." 



Bate makes use of the hippo's ivory, as in a recipe 

 for kidney affections (p. 637), in which he prescribes 

 two ounces of ivory, and half an ounce of " sea-horse 

 tooth rasped." The same author, in one of his 

 quiddanies for wasting, weakness, and consumption 

 (p. 612), gives us, besides the raspings, an ounce of 

 the genitals of the same creature. 



Sheep. — To the sheep we are chiefly beholden for 

 fat and wool. Of the healing value of the former a 

 high opinion prevailed. Fat, says Hooper (p. 317), 

 " is nourishing to those that have strong digestive 

 powers. It is used externally as a softening remedy 

 and enters into the composition of ointments and 

 plasters." From Howard (vol. ii. p. 883) we 

 gather that fat is "an oily sulphureous part of the 

 blood, deposited in the cells of the membrana 

 adiposa." It is of two kinds, " one white, or rather 

 yellow, soft and lax, which is easily melted and is 

 called pinguedo ; another white, firm, brittle, and 

 which is not so easily melted, called sebum." Amid 

 other interesting disclosures he instructs us : " The 

 way of preparing fat for medicinal purposes is to take 

 cut the skins, veins, fibres, etc., wash it till it be- 

 comes unbloody, then melt it by a gentle heat, with 

 a little water, till the water is evaporated ; strain, 



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