392 
pliny's natueal histobt. 
[Book XXIX. 
dicinal uses of the dog which are marvellously commended, I 
shall have occasion to refer to on the appropriate occasions. 
CHAP. 15. EEMEDlES CLASSIFIED ACCOEDING TO THE DIEPERENT 
MALADIES. KEMEDIES FOR INJURIES INFLICTED BY SERPENTS. 
EEMEDlES DERIVED FROM MICE. 
We will now resume the order originally proposed.'^ For 
stings inflicted by serpents fresh sheeps'-dung, boiled in wine, 
is considered a very useful application : as also mice split 
asunder and applied to the wound. Indeed, these last animals 
are possessed of certain properties by no means to be despised, 
at the ascension of the planets more particularly, as already^ 
stated ; the lobes increasing or decreasing in number, with the 
age of the moon, as the case may be. The magicians have a 
story that swine will follow any person who gives them a 
mouse's liver to eat, enclosed in a fig : they say, too, that it 
has a similar effect upon man, but that the spell may be de- 
stroyed by swallowing a cyathus of oil. 
CHAP. 16. REMEDIES DERIVED FROM THE WEASEL. 
There are two varieties of the weasel ; the one, wild,^ larger 
than the other, and known to the Greeks as the ictis its 
gall is said to be very efficacious as an antidote to the sting of 
the asp, but of a venomous nature in other respects.^* The 
other kind,^^ which prowls about our houses, and is in the 
habit, Cicero tells us, of removing its young ones, and 
changing every day from place to place, is an enemy to ser- 
pents. The flesh of this last, preserved in salt, is given, in 
doses of one denarius, in three cyathi of drink to persons who 
have been stung by serpents : or else the maw of the animal is 
stufi*ed with coriander seed and dried, to be taken for the same 
purpose in wine. The young one of the weasel is still more 
efficacious for these purposes. 
CHAP. 17. REMEDIES DERIVED FROM BTTGS. 
There are some things, of a most revolting nature, but which 
' Of remedies classified according to the different maladies. 
8 In B. xi. c. 76. ^ The ferret, most probably. 
^* See c. 33 of this Book. The common weasel. 
^1 Probably in his work entitled " Admiranda,'* now lost. Holland says 
*^6ome take these for our cats." 
