Chap. 45.] 
THE KATTTRE OF SALT. 
511 
Every kind of salt is useful for the cure of quinzy ; but, in 
addition to this, it is necessary to make external applications 
simultaneously with oil, vinegar, and tar. Mixed with 
wine, it is a gentle aperient to the bowels, and, taken in a 
similar manner, it acts as an expellent of all kinds of intestinal 
worms. Placed beneath the tongue, it enables convalescents 
to support the heat^^ of the bath. Burnt more than once upon 
a plate at a white heat, and then enclosed in a bag, it alleviates 
pains in the sinews, about the shoulders and kidneys more 
particularly. Taken internally, and similarly burnt at a white 
heat and applied in bags, it is curative of colic, griping pains 
in the bowels, and sciatica. Beaten up in wine and honey, 
with meal, it is a remedy for gout ; a malady for the especial 
behoof of which the observation should be borne in mind, 
that there is nothing better for all parts of the body than sun 
and salt hence^^ it is that we see the bodies of fishermen as 
hard as horn — gout, however, is the principal disease for the 
benefit of which this maxim should be remembered. 
Salt is useful for the removal of corns upon the feet, and of 
chilblains : for the cure of burns also, it is applied with oil, or 
else chewed. It acts as a check also upon blisters, and, in cases 
of erysipelas and serpiginous ulcers, it is applied topically with 
vinegar or with hyssop. For the cure of carcinoma it is 
employed in combination with Taminian^*^ grapes; and for 
phagedsenic ulcers it is used parched with barley-meal, a 
linen pledget steeped in wine being laid upon it. In cases of 
jaundice, it is employed as a friction before the fire, with oil 
and vinegar, till the patient is made to perspire, for the purpose 
of preventing the itching sensations attendant upon that dis- 
ease. When persons are exhausted with fatigue, it is usual to 
rub them with salt and oil. Mau}^ have treated dropsy with 
salt, have used external applications of salt and oil for the 
burning heats of fever, and have cured chronic coughs by laying 
salt upon the patient's tongue. Salt has been used, also, as 
an injection for sciatica, and has been applied to ulcers of a 
fungous or putrid nature. 
To bites inflicted by the crocodile, salt is applied, the sores 
In c. 23, he has said much the same of cold Avater. 
°8 Sale et sole." 
This passage would come more naturally after the succeeding one. 
See B. xxiii. c. 13. 
