388 
pliny's natural history. 
[Book XXJX. 
the bowels, but excessive menstruation as well. In cases, 
again, where the discharges are greatly in excess, eggs are 
taken raw, with meal, in water. The yolks, too, are employed 
alone, boiled hard in vinegar and roasted with ground pepper, 
when wanted to arrest diarrhoea. 
For dysentery, there is a sovereign remedy, prepared in the 
following manner : an egg is emptied into a new earthen vessel, 
which done, in order that all the proportions may be equal, 
fill the shell, first with honey, then with oil, and then with 
vinegar ; beat them up together, and thoroughly incorporate 
them : the better the quality of the several ingredients, the 
more efficacious the mixture will be. Others, again, instead 
of oil and vinegar, use the same proportions of red resin and 
wine. There is also another way of making up this prepara- 
tion : the proportion of oil, and of that only, remains the same, 
and to it they add two sixtieth parts of a denarius of the 
vegetable which we have spoken of under the name of ^^rhus,'^''^ 
and five oboli of honey. All these ingredients are boiled down 
together, and no food is eaten by the patient till the end of 
four hours after taking the mixture. Many persons, too, have 
a cure for griping pains in the bowels, by beating up two eggs 
with four cloves of garlick, and admiDistering them, warmed 
in one semi-sextarius of wine. 
ISTot to omit anything in commendation of eggs, I would 
here add that glair of egg, mixed with quicklime, unites 
broken "^^ glass. Indeed, so great is the efficacy of the substance 
of an egg, that wood dipped in it will not take fire, and cloth 
with which it has come in contact will not ignite.^ On this 
occasion, however, it is only of the eggs of poultry that I have 
been speaking, though those of the various other birds as well 
are possessed of many useful properties, as I shall have to 
mention on the appropriate occasions. 
CHAP. 12. — serpents' eggs. 
In addition to the above, there is another kind of egg,**^ held 
^ See B. xxiv. c. 54. 
This is the fact, and it is similarly used for mending china. White 
of egg, mixed with whiskey or spirits of wine, will answer the purpose 
equally well. 
^ Ajasson remarks that there is some slight truth in this assertion. 
81 Pliny alludes here to the beads or rings of glass which were used by 
the Druids as charms to impose on the credulity of their devotees, under 
