380 
pliisty's natural histoet. 
[Book XXIX. 
tors, I can readily imagine ; but it was not these inconveni- 
ences that Cato had in view, when he spoke thus strongly in 
condemnation of the medical art. 
" Theriace'^^ is the name given to a preparation devised by 
luxury ; a composition formed of six hundred different in- 
gredients ; and this while Nature has bestowed upon us such 
numbers of remedies, each of which would have fully answered 
the purpose employed by itself! The Mithridatic^^ antidote 
is composed of four and fifty ingredients, none of which are 
used in exactly the same proportion, and the quantity pre- 
scribed is in some cases so small as the sixtieth part of one 
denarius ! Which of the gods, pray, can have instructed man 
in such trickery as this, a height to which the mere subtlety 
of human invention could surely never have reached? It 
clearly must emanate from a vain ostentation of scientific skill, 
and must be set down as a monstrous system of pu£S.ng off the 
medical art. 
And yet, after all, the physicians themselves do not under- 
stand this branch of their profession ; and I have ascertained 
that it is a common thing for them to put mineral vermilion 
in their medicines, a rank poison, as I shall have occasion to 
show when I come to speak of the pigments, in place of Indian 
cinnabar, and all because they mistake the name of the one 
drug for that of the other ! These, however, are errors which 
only concern the health of individuals, while it is the practices 
which Cato foresaw and dreaded, less dangerous in themselves 
and little regarded, practices, in fact, which the leading men 
in the art do not hesitate to avow, that have wrought the 
corruption of the manners of our empire. 
The practices I allude to are those to which, while enjoying 
robust health, we submit: such, for instance, as rubbing the body 
with wax and oil,^^ a preparation for a wrestling match, by 
rights, but which, these men pretend, was invented as a preser- 
vative of health ; the use of hot baths, which are necessary. 
The origin of our word treacle." See B. xx. c. 100, and Note 97. 
Used as a round number, like our expression " ten thousand." 
5s See B. xxiii. c. 77, and B. xxv. c. 26. 
59 Minium." This red lead had the name of cinnabaris nativa," 
whence the error. In B. xxxiii. c. 38. 
6^ As tending to effeminacy, or undermining the constitution. 
62 See B. xiviii. c. 13. 
