SECT. XXXIX.—ON PERSONS INJURED BY COLD.
Those who are much congealed ought to be laid in a warm place, and rubbed with the oil of privet, or of the iris. Afterwards, when moderately heated, they should get pepper, or myrrh, with sweet fragrant old wine, or Cyrenaic juice in wine or vinegar, or pellitory or castor with vinegar, and be given food of a heating nature.
Commentary. This Section is taken from Oribasius. (Synops. v, 36.)
Rhases directs us to lay a person congealed with cold in a warm apartment, and to rub with hot hands the whole of his body, with the exception of the head, which is to be warmed with hot cloths. Persons having warm bodies are then to lie down in bed beside him; and he is to take a draught containing assafœtida, myrrh, pepper, and strong wine. When the respiration is fairly restored, he is to take some nourishing food and wine; and is then to be covered up with many blankets, and left to sleep. When he awakes, he is to be put into a hot bath, and after remaining for a long time in it, he is to be strongly rubbed when he leaves it with calefacient oil, such as the oil of lilies or narcissus, to which costus, castor, musk, and spurge have been added. (Ad Mansor. vi, 5.)
Let the reader remark the similarity of the ancient practice in the cases of persons who have been exposed to great cold, and of those who have been poisoned with opium. (See [Book Fifth, 43.]) Galen remarks, that the effects of opium, and of the exposure of the body to extreme cold, are very like. (Comment. in Epidem. Hippocrat.)
In the 4th book of Xenophon’s ‘Anabasis,’ there is an interesting description of the effects resulting from the exposure of the Grecian army to extreme cold, and the means which they took to preserve themselves from being injured by it. The historian relates that they rubbed themselves before the fire with an ointment composed of swines’ seam, and oils of sesame, of bitter almonds, and of turpentine. The Carthaginian soldiers of Hannibal, in like manner, when exposed to great cold among the mountains of Italy, rubbed their bodies with oil as a protection from its effects, and with great success, if we may believe Florus the historian: he says, “tunc callidissimi hostes frigidum et nivalem nacti diem, quam se ignibus prius, oleoque fovissent, (horribile dictu!) homines a meridie, et sole venientes, nostra nos hieme vicerunt.” (Hist. Rom. ii, 6.) It is worthy of remark, by the way, that Baron Larrey, in his account of the retreat of the French army from Moscow, states that the inhabitants of southern climates endured the cold better than those of the north. The fact that the Carthaginian soldiers rubbed their bodies with oil on the occasion we have mentioned is stated also by Polybius (Hist. iii, 72), and by Livy (Hist. Roman, xxi, 55.)
Quintus Curtius relates that the soldiers of Alexander the Great rubbed their bodies with the juice of sesame, instead of oil, when exposed to intense cold while crossing the Bactrian mountains. (vii, 15.)
Pliny, with his usual terseness, thus states the powers of oil in protecting the body both from cold and heat: “Oleo natura tepefacere corpus, et contra algores munire; eidemque fervores capitis refrigerare.” (Hist. Nat. xv, 6.)