Commentary. See Rhases (ad Mansor. viii, 9; Cont. xxxv); Haly Abbas (Pract. iv, 28); Alsaharavius (Pract. xxx, 2, 31). Haly adopts the treatment laid down by our author. Alsaharavius recommends a composition of fat, wax, pitch, and galbanum.
SECT. V.—ON WASPS AND BEES.
Those who have been stung by bees experience pain, redness, and swelling in the wound, the surrounding parts become tumefied, and the sting remains in the wound; and those stung by wasps experience all the other symptoms, and that in an aggravated degree, only the sting does not remain. Both cases are remedied by rubbing the parts with clay, or cow’s dung, or with the juice of figs, or with the triturated leaves of sycamore, or of mallows; or by applying a cataplasm of barley flour mixed with vinegar. Foment also with brine or sea-water.
Commentary. See a similar plan of treatment recommended by Aëtius, Dioscorides, Nonnus, and Rhases. Simeon Seth recommends the decoction of mallows, which appears to have been a domestic remedy generally used in such cases. See also Geopon. (xii, 12); and Pliny (H. N. xx). Virgil alludes to this practice in a passage which has been often misunderstood. (Georg. iv, 230.) Haly Abbas recommends cold water or snow, also Armenian earth with vinegar, and other applications of the same nature. (Pract. iv, 34.) Alsaharavius mentions the same remedies as Haly, but expresses himself sceptical as to their efficacy. (Pract. xxx, 2, 29.) Rhases, among other applications, mentions a composition of camphor and vinegar; and another containing opium, henbane, and camphor, to be used along with a cloth moistened in snow-water. The Arabian writers on husbandry also recommend the composition from mallows and oil, as a preservative of the face and hands from the stings of bees and wasps. (Casiri, Bibl. Arab. Hisp. 335.)
SECT. VI.—ON THE PHALANGIA, OR VENOMOUS SPIDERS.
When a person has been bitten by a phalangion the part itself appears red, and as if pricked by a sharp-pointed instrument, but it does not swell, nor is it very warm, but it is moderately red, cold, and itchy. Those who have been stung experience a great sense of cold, trembling, heaviness of the body, a cold sweat, constant pain, paleness, and a perpetual desire to make water; in some cases there are dysuria, erection of the genital member, humid eyes, and spasmodic distension about the groins and thighs, a violent gnawing pain of the stomach, loss of taste in the tongue, vomiting of water, or of substances resembling webs, and sometimes these substances are discharged by the urine or bowels. By going into hot water they are freed from pain, but the pain returns again with violence. They are relieved by the application of the ashes of figs mixed with salts triturated in wine, or of the pounded root of the wild pomegranate, or of birthwort with barley flour mixed with vinegar. Bathe the ulcers with hot sea-water, or with the decoction of baum, the leaves of which may also be applied. Recourse must also be had frequently to baths, and potions composed of these things, the seed of southernwood, dill, birthwort, wild chick-peas, Ethiopian cumin, pounded cedar-berries, the bark of the plane tree, the seed of the herb trefoil, the fruit of tamarisk; give two drachms of each of these with one hemina of wine, or a decoction of the green parts of cypress, or of its balls mixed with wine. Some say that the river crab when reduced to juice, with milk, and the seed of parsley, and given, removes the mischief.
Commentary. Nicander describes several species of phalangia, whose bites occasion a variety of symptoms, such as a cold horror, tremblings of the limbs, and in some instances tension of the genital members. On the phalangia, see Aristotle (Hist. Anim. ix, 39); Xenophon (Memorab. i, 3); Pliny (H. N. xix, 9, and xxix, 27); Ælian (H. A. xvii, 11); Solinus (Polyhist. xvii); Phile. (66). The distinction between the phalangia and common spiders is thus stated by Humelbergius: “Araneorum primâ divisione duo genera sunt, unum eorum qui innoxii sunt quos Græci arachnas, Latini araneos dicunt, quorum etiam a Dioscoride duo genera recensentur, unum quod holcon et lycon vocat, alterum vero dicit esse quod candidas, tenues et densas telas operetur. Alterum genus est eorum qui noxii sunt, quos et Græci et Latini phalangia vocant.” (Apud Apuleium.)
Similar modes of treatment to that of our author are recommended by Dioscorides (vi, 42); Celsus (v, 27); Nonnus (270); Aëtius (xiii, 16); Actuarius (Meth. Med. vi, 10); Haly Abbas (Theor. viii, 22); and Alsaharavius (Pract. xxx, 2, 26).
Sprengel allows that there is considerable difficulty in determining the nature of the ancient phalangia. He attempts, however, to refer the different species described by Nicander to their proper names in the Linnæan classification. (Comment. in Dioscoridem.)