[578] Kühn’s Edit. of Galen, vol. xii. p. 228.
[579] Opera, lib. xv. p. 515, and lib. xiv. p. 483.
[580] Dr. Adams’ Sydenham Society Edition, vol. iii. p. 253.
[581] Kühn’s Edit. vol. xii. p. 701.
[582] Hist. Nat. lib. xxxiv. c. xii. v. iii. p. 399.
[583] See Milligan’s Edit. p. 194, Misy sanguinem suppremit; p. 197, rodit; p. 199, crustas inducit, etc.
[584] See De Methodo Medendi, lib. vi. pp. 305-308.
[585] Viper wine (Vinum Viperinum) and viper broth (Jus Viperinum) had long a place in the London Pharmacopœia; and still longer the vipers were retained in it as an ingredient in the celebrated but multifarious Theriaca Andromache, which, with its discordant farrago of seventy and odd ingredients, was only expelled about a hundred years ago from the British Pharmacopœias. (See Alston’s Materia Medica, vol. ii. p. 517; Hill’s Materia Medica, p. 829; Quincy’s Dispensatory, p. 400; Mead’s Essay on the Viper, 1745, etc.)
[586] Perhaps this incantation was but a remnant of that ophite worship which appears to have in former times prevailed so generally throughout the world. On the ancient extent of serpent-worship in the old world, see Stukeley’s Abury, p. 32; Colonel Tod’s History of Rajasthan; the Rev. J. B. Deane’s learned Treatise on the Worship of the Serpent, and his observations on various ancient Dracontia, or ophite temples in England, France, etc., in the Archæologia, vol. xxv. p. 180, etc. Latterly, the observations of Mr. Squier would seem to show that the same type of worship was, in long past times, diffused as extensively over the new world. (See his late work, entitled Serpent Symbol, and the Worship of the Reciprocal Principles of Nature in America.) The supposed connection of the serpent and serpent-worship with the healing art has been handed down to us emblematically in the serpent symbol with which the caduceus of Æsculapius is always represented as surrounded. The Romans regarded the serpent as a symbol of health, and we find it figured as such on some of the coins of Augustus and Claudian.
[587] Aphrodisiacus, sive, Collectio Auctorum de Lue Venerea. Venet. 1566-67; and Lugd. Batav. 1728.