294 
plint's natural HISTOUT. [Book XXVIII. 
of speech — that is quite certain.^* For the cure of inguinal 
tumours, some persons take the thrum of an old web, and after 
tying seven or nine knots in it, mentioning at each knot the 
name of some widow woman or other, attach it to the part 
affected. To assuage the pain of a wound, they recommend 
the party to take a nail or any other substance that has been 
trodden under foot, and to wear it, attached to the body with 
the thrum of a web. To get rid of warts, some lie in a 
footpath with the face upwards, when the moon is twenty days 
old at least, and after fixing their gaze upon it, extend their 
arms above the head, and rub themselves with anything 
within their reach. If a person is extracting a corn at the 
moment that a star shoots, he will experience an immediate 
cure,^^ they say. By pouring vinegar upon the hinges of a 
door, a thick liniment is formed, which, applied to the fore- 
head, will alleviate headache : an effect equally produced, we 
are told, by binding the temples with a halter with which a 
man has been hanged. When a fish-bone happens to stick in 
the throat, it will go down immediately, if the person plunges 
his feet into cold water ; but where the accident has happened 
with any other kind of bone, the proper remedy is to apply 
to the head some fragments of bones taken from the same dish. 
In cases where bread has stuck in the throat, the best plan is 
to take some of the same bread, and insert it in both ears. 
CHAP. 13. — -REMEDIES DEEIVED EROM THE HUMAIf EXCRETIONS. 
In Greece, where everything is turned to account, the 
owners of the gymnasia have introduced the very excretions^® 
even of the human body among the most efficient remedies ; 
so much so, indeed, that the scrapings from the bodies of the 
athletes are looked upon as possessed of certain properties of 
an emollient, calorific, resolvent, and expletive nature, re- 
sulting from the compound of human sweat and oil. These 
scrapings are used, in the form of a pessary, for inflammations 
and contractions of the uterus : similarly employed, they act 
as an emmenagogue, and are useful for reducing condylomata 
and inflammations of the rectum, as also for assuaging pains 
^1 The " constat here, whether it belongs to the magicians, or to Pliny 
himself, is highly amusing, as Ajasson remarks. 
»5 Sillig appears to be right in his conjecture that the vel" here 
should be omitted. ^® See B. xv. c. 5, 
