Topsel further says: “The principall of all other subjects of their (the Scorpions’) hatred are virgins and women, whom they do not only desire to harm, but also when they have harmed are never perfectly recovered. (Albertus).…
“The lion is by the Scorpion put to flight wheresoever he seeith it, for he feareth it as the enemy of his life, and therefore writeth S. Ambrose, Exiguo Scorpionis aculeo exagitatur leo, the lion is much moved at the small sting of a Scorpion.”[1092]
Naude tells us that there is a species of Scorpions in Italy, which are so domesticated as to be put between sheets to cool the beds during the heat of summer.[1093] Pliny mentions that the Scorpions of Italy are harmless.[1094]
Among the curious things recorded by Pliny concerning the Scorpion, the following have been selected: Some writers, he says, are of opinion that the Scorpion devours its offspring, and that the one among the young which is the most adroit avails itself of its sole mode of escape by placing itself on the back of the mother, and thus finding a place where it is in safety from the tail and the sting. The one that thus escapes, they say, becomes the avenger of the rest,
and at last, taking advantage of its elevated position, puts its parent to death.[1095]
According to Pliny, those who carry the plant “tricoccum,” or, as it is also called, “scorpiuron,”[1096] about their person are never stung by a Scorpion, and it is said, he continues, that if a circle is traced on the ground around a Scorpion with a sprig of this plant, the animal will never move out of it, and that if a Scorpion is covered with it, or even sprinkled with the water in which it has been steeped, it will die that instant.[1097]
Attalus assures us, says Pliny, that if a person, the moment he sees a Scorpion, says “Duo,”[1098] the reptile will stop short and forbear to sting.[1099]
Concerning Scorpions, Diophanes, contemporary with Cæsar and Cicero, has collected the following several opinions of the more ancient writers: If you take a Scorpion, he says, and burn it, the others will betake themselves to flight: and if a person carefully rubs his hands with the juice of radish, he may without fear and danger take hold of Scorpions, and of other reptiles: and radishes laid on Scorpions instantly destroy them. You will also cure the bite of a Scorpion, by applying a silver ring to the place. A suffumigation of sandarach[1100] with galbanum, or goat’s fat, will drive away Scorpions and every other reptile. If a person will also boil a Scorpion in oil, and will rub the place bit by a Scorpion, he will stop the pain.[1101] But Apuleius says, that if a person bit by a Scorpion sits on an ass, turned toward its tail, that the ass suffers the pain, and that it is destroyed.[1102] Democritus says that a person bit by a Scorpion, who instantly says to his ass, “A Scorpion has bit me,” will suffer no pain, but it passes to the ass.[1103] The newt
has an antipathy to the Scorpion: if a person, therefore, melts a newt in oil, and applies the oil to the person that is bitten, he frees him from pain. The same author also says that the root of a rose-tree being applied, cures persons bit by Scorpions. Plutarch recommends to fasten small nuts to the feet of the bed, that Scorpions may not approach it. Zoroaster says that lettuce-seed, being drunk with wine, cures persons bit by Scorpions. Florentinus says, if one applies the juice of the fig to the wound of a person just bitten, that the poison will proceed no farther; or, if the person bit eat squill, he will not be hurt, but he will say that the squill is pleasant to his palate. Tarentinus also says that a person holding the herb sideritis may take hold of Scorpions, and not be hurt by them.[1104] Dioscorides, among many other remedies for the sting of the Scorpion, prescribes “a fish called Lacerta, salted and cut in pieces; the barbel fish cut in two; the flesh of a fish called Smaris; house-mice cut asunder; horse or ass dung; the shell of an Indian small nut; ram’s flesh burnt; mummie, four grains, with butter and cow’s milk; a broiled Scorpion eaten; river-crabs raw and bruised, and drank with asses’ milk: locusts broiled and eaten,” etc. Rabby Moyses prescribes pigeon’s dung dried; Constantinus, hens’ dung, or the heart applied outwardly; Anatolius, crows’ dung; Averrhois, the bezoar-stone; Monus, silver; Silvaticus, from Serapis, pewter; and Orpheus, coral.
“Quintus Serenus writes thus, and adviseth: