18 
PLINY'S NATUEAL HISTOEY. 
[Book XXIY. 
honey to the tonsillary glands, it facilitates expectoration. 
Applied topically, it acts as a detergent upon ulcers, and 
makes new flesh. Mixed with raisins and axle-grease, it 
forms a detergent plaster for carbuncles and putrid ulcers, and, 
with pine-bark or sulphur, for serpiginous sores. Pitch has 
been administered too by some, in doses of one cyathus, for 
phthisis and inveterate coughs. It heals chaps of the feet and 
rectum, inflamed tumours, and malformed nails ; and used as a 
fumigation, it is curative of indurations and derangements of 
the uterus, and of lethargy. Eoiled with barley-meal and the 
urine of a youth who has not arrived at puberty, it causes 
scrofulous sores to suppurate. Dry pitch is used also for the 
cure of alopecy. For aflections of the mamillae, Eruttian 
pitch is warmed in wine with fine spelt meal, and applied as 
hot as can be borne. 
CHAP. 24. PISSEL^ON AND PALIMPISSA I SIXTEEN REMEDIES. 
"We have already^^ described the way in which liquid pitch 
and the oil known as pisselaoon are made. Some persons boil 
the pitch over again, and give it the name of palimpissa."^® For 
quinzy^^ and aff'ections of the uvula, liquid pitch is employed 
internally. It is used also for the cure of ear-ache, for the 
improvement of the sight, and as a salve for the lips ; and is 
employed for hysterical suffocations, inveterate coughs, profuse 
expectorations, spasms, nervousness, opisthotony, paralysis, 
and pains in the sinews. It is a very excellent remedy too for 
itch in dogs and beasts of burden. 
CHAP. 25. PISSASPHALTOS : TWO HEMEDIES. 
There is pissasph altos too, a natural production of the 
territory of the Apolloniates,^^ and consisting of pitch mixed 
^7 In B. xvi. c. 22, and B. xv. c. 7. 
" Pitch boiled over again/' 
19 Fee says, that this statement is quite beyond all belief. Indeed there 
is little doubt that tar taken internally for quinzy, would only tend to . 
aggravate the complaint. He states that a solution of tar in water is some- 
times used internally with success for pulmonary phthisis. Bishop 
Berkeley wrote his Siris, on the virtues of Tar- water as a medicament, 
having been indebted to it for his recovery from an attack of colic. 
'^^ See B. xvi. c. 23. His description here is faulty, it being solely a 
natural pitch or mineral bitumen, without any admixture of vegetable 
pitch. Yitruvius calls this pissasphalt, pitch ; but ^lian, more correctly, 
