406 
Pliny's nattjeal history. [Book XXIX. 
There is a small worm^^ in a dog's tongue, known as lytta"^^ 
to the Greeks : if this is removed from the animal while a 
pup, it will never become mad or lose its appetite. This worm, 
after being carried thrice round a fire, is given to persons who 
have been bitten by a mad dog, to prevent them from becom- 
ing mad. This madness, too, is prevented by eating a cock's 
brains ; but the virtue of these brains lasts for one year only, 
and no more. They say, too, that a cock's comb, pounded, is 
highly efficacious as an application to the wound ; as also, 
goose-grease, mixed with honey. The flesh also of a mad 
dog is sometimes salted, and taken with the food, as a remedy 
for this disease. In addition to this, young puppies of the 
same sex as the dog that has inflicted the injury, are drowned 
in water, and the person who has been bitten eats their liver 
raw. The dung of poultry, provided it is of a red colour, is 
very useful, applied with vinegar ; the ashes, too, of the tail 
of a shrew-mouse, if the animal has survived and been set at 
liberty ; a clod from a swallow's nest, applied with vinegar ; 
the young of a swallow, reduced to ashes ; or the skin or old 
slough of a serpent that has been cast in spring, beaten up 
with a male crab in wine : this slough, I would remark, put 
away by itself in chests and drawers, destroys moths. 
So virulent is the poison of the mad dog, that its very urine 
even, if trod upon, is injurious, more particularly if the person 
has any ulcerous sores about him. The proper remedy in such 
case is to apply horse- dung, sprinkled with vinegar, and warmed 
in a fig. These marvellous properties of the poison will occa- 
sion the less surprise, when we remember that, a stone bitten 
by a dog "has become a proverbial expression for discord and 
variance.''^ Whoever makes water where a dog has previ- 
ously watered, will be sensible of numbness in the loins, they 
say. 
This is still the vulgar notion ; but in reality there is no worm, but 
certain white pustules beneath the tongue, which break spontaneously at 
the end of twelve days after birth. Puppies are still wormed," as it is 
called, as a preventive of hydrophobia, it is said, and of a propensity to 
gnaw objects which come in their way. The " worming " consists in the 
breaking of these pustules, "^^ " Rage " or madness." 
"^^ ^' For the manner of a dog is to bee angrie with the stone that is 
thrown at him, without regard to the partie that flung it, whereupon grew 
the proverb in Greeke, kvojv Uq tov \l9ov ayavaKTovtra (' A dog venting 
bis rage upon a stone/)" — Holland, 
