512 
pliity's katxteal history* 
[Book XXXL 
being, tiglitlj bandaged with linen cloths, first dipped®^ in 
vinegar. It is taken internally, with hydromel, to neutralize 
the effects of opium, and is applied topically, with meal and 
honey, to sprains and fieshy excrescences. In cases of tooth- 
ache, it is used as a collutory with vinegar, and is very useful, 
applied externally, with resin. Por all these purposes, however, 
froth of salt^^ is found to be more agreeable and still more 
efficacious. Still, however, every kind of salt is good as an 
ingredient in acopa,^^ when warming properties are required : 
the same, too, in the case of detersive applications, when re- 
quired for plumping out and giving a smooth surface to the 
skin. Employed topically, salt is curative of itch- scab in sheep 
and cattle, for which disease it is given them to lick. It is 
injected, also, with the spittle, into the eyes of beasts of burden. 
Thus much with reference to salt. 
CHAP. 46. (10.)— THE VAEIOTJS KINDS OF NITKT7M, THE METHODS 
OF PEEPARINa IT, AND THE EEMEDIES DEEIVED FEOM IT : TWO 
HTJNDEED AND TWENTY- ONE OBSEEVATIONS THEEEON. 
And here we must no longer defer giving an account of 
nitrum which in its properties does not greatly differ from 
salt, and deserves all the more to be attentively considered, 
from the evident fact that the medical men who have written 
upon it were ignorant of its nature ; of all which authors 
Theophrastus is the one that has given the greatest attention to 
the point. It is found in small quantities in Media, in certain 
valleys there that are white with heat and drought ; the name 
given to it being halmyrax."^^ In Thracia, too, near Philippi, 
6^ "Ita ut batuerentur ante." From the correspondiug passage in 
Bioscorides, where the expression BaTrroiJUzvoi ttg o'^oq is used, it would 
appear that the proper word here is ** baptizarentur ;" or possibly, a lost 
Grasco-Latin word, bapterentur.'^ Littre suggests " hebetarentur," *' the 
part being first numbed " by the aid of a bandage. 
^2 f Spuma salis." Collected from the foam on the sea-shore. 
63 See Kote 36, above, p. 507. 
6* Beckmann, who devotes several pages to a consideration of the " ni- 
trum" of the ancients, considers it not to be our ^' nitre," or " saltpetre," 
but a general name for impure alkaline salts. See his Hist Inv. Vol. II. 
pp. 490 — 503, Bohfis Ed. Ajasson, without hesitation, pronounces it to 
be nitrate of potash; neither more or less than our saltpetre, and quotes a 
statement from Andreossy, that it is still to be found in great quantities 
at Mount Ptou-Ampihosem, near the city of Pihosem, called Nitria by 
St. Jerome. *' Salt bursting from the earth.** 
