Note 786 — Chapter IV · GALEN

XII, 358-59. Concerning the virtue of river crabs we may also quote from a story told in Nias Island, west of Sumatra: “for had he only eaten river crabs, men would have cast their skin like crabs, and so, renewing their youth perpetually, would never have died.”—From J. G. Frazer (1918), I, 67. The belief that the serpent annually changes its skin and renews its youth may account for the virtues ascribed to the flesh of vipers and to theriac in the following paragraphs.