[24]. Descartes imagined that he had found out a diet that would prolong his life five hundred years.
[25]. Quædam opera magica mulieribus perfecta fuère, sicut de productione aquarum reperimus apud Chaldæos; si decem Virgines se ornent, vestimenta rubra inducant, saltent ita ut una altera impellat, idque progrediendo et retrogrediendo, digitos denique versus solem certis signis extendant, ad finem perducta illâ actione, aquas illici et prodire dicunt. Sic scribunt, si quatuor mulieres in terga jaceant, et pedes suas cum composione versus cœlum extendant, certa verba, certos item gestus, adhibeat illas turpi hac actione grandinem decidentem avertere.—Tiedman’s “Disputatio de quæstione, quæ fuerit artium magicarum origo.”
[26]. This method of solving the above problem is supported by the authority of many fathers of the church.
[27]. Amasis cum frui Amplexibus Ladices nequiret impotentem sese ab ea redditum contendebat pertinacissime. Vide Herodotum, lib. 2.
[28]. It is clearly shewn by the earliest records, that the ancients were in the possession of many powerful remedies; thus Melampus of Argos, the most ancient Greek physician with whom we are acquainted, is said to have cured one of the Argonauts of sterility, by administering the rust of iron in wine for ten days; and the same physician used Hellebore as a purge, on the daughters of King Prœtus, who were afflicted with melancholy. Venesection was also a remedy of very early origin, for Podalerius, on his return from the Trojan war, cured the daughter of Damethus, who had fallen from a height, by bleeding her in both arms. Opium, or a preparation of the poppy, was certainly known in the earliest ages; and it was probably opium that Helen mixed with wine, and gave to the guests of Menelaus, under the expressive name of nepenthe, (Odyss. Δ,) to drive away their cares, and increase their hilarity; and this conjecture receives much support from the fact, that the nepenthe of Homer was obtained from the Egyptian Thebes, (whence the Tincture of Opium has been called Thebaic Tincture;) and if the opinion of Dr. Darwin may be credited, the Cumæan Sibyll never sat on the portending tripod without first swallowing a few drops of the juice of the cherry-laurel.
“At Phœbi nondum Patiens, immanis in antro,
Bacchatur vates, magnum si pectore possit
Excussisse deum: tanto magis ille fategat
Os rabidum, fera corda domans, fingitque premendo.”
Æneid, l. vi. v. 78.