33. For watery eyes. Take one drachm of ebony and nine oboli of burnt copper, rub them upon a whetstone, add three oboli of saffron; triturate all these things reduced to a fine powder, pour in an Attic hemina of sweet wine, and then place in the sun and cover up; when sufficiently digested, use it.[598]
34. For violent pains of the eyes. Take of chalcitis,[599] and of raisin, of each 1 dr., when digested for two days, strain; and pounding myrrh and saffron, and having mixed must, with these things, digest in the sun; and with this anoint the eyes when in a state of severe pain. Let it be kept in a copper vessel.
35. Mode of distinguishing persons in an hysterical fit. Pinch them with your fingers, and if they feel, it is hysterical; but if not, it is a convulsion.
36. To persons in coma, (dropsy?) give to drink meconium (euphorbia peplus?) to the amount of a round Attic leciskion (small acetabulum[600]).
37. Of squama æris, as much as three specilla can contain, with the gluten of summer wheat: levigate, pound, form into pills, and give; it purges water downwards.
38. A medicine for opening the bowels. Pour upon figs the juice of spurge, in the proportion of seven to one: then put into a new vessel and lay past when properly mixed. Give before food.
39. Pounding meconium, pouring on it water, and straining, and mixing flour, and baking into a cake, with the addition of boiled honey, give in affections of the anus and in dropsy; and after eating of it, let the patient drink of a sweet watery wine, and diluted hydromel prepared from wax: or collecting meconium, lay it up for medicinal purposes.[601]
FIRST AND THIRD BOOKS
OF
THE EPIDEMICS.
THE EPIDEMICS.
BOOK I.