[711] Quæstiones Medicæ et Problemata Physica.
[712] Blakey, op. cit., 73.
[713] Cf. Burton, op. cit., 1, 97, whose trs. is given above.
[714] The belief in fish as curatives of not only human but also animal ailments still lingers. In this very year, 1920, we read in The Field, Aug. 14, of a Ross-shire crofter begging for a live trout to push down the throat of a cow, that had just calved but was suffering from hæmorrhage. In consequence, or in spite of the trout, the cow recovered.
[715] De Materia Medica, II. 33; I. 181, ed. (Kühn).
[716] De Materia Medica, II. 22, 1, 176 (Kühn). Cf. P. A. Matthiole, Commentarii in libros sex Pedanii Dioscordis Anazarbei (Venetiis, 1554), Bk. II. c. xix.
[717] VI. 9.
[718] Salpe the midwife recommends this prescription to disguise the age of boys on sale for slaves (Pliny, XXXII. 47). At the end of the chapter the author seems to awake from his trance of trustfulness, in the words, “in the case of every depilatory, the hairs should always be removed before it is applied!”
[719] Pliny, XXXII. 18. Belief in the efficacy of fish-nostrums continues unto this day: in the Middle Ages it permeated all classes, and all Europe, e.g. Charles IX. of France would never, if he could help it, drink unless a fragment of the tusk of the narwhal, or so-called sea-unicorn, were in the cup to counteract a possible poison.
[720] Badham, op. cit., 83.