Note 122 — Chapter V

A viper drowned in a bowl of wine gave the draught great healing virtues for leprosy. This happy discovery, like many others of still greater value, was the result of accident. Some mowers found on going to their provisions that a viper had got into the wine, so they, very naturally, “contented themselves with water; but when they had finished their day’s work, and were to go out of the field, as it were out of pity they gave a leprous man the wine wherein the viper was drowned, supposing it better for him to die than to live on in that misery, but he, when he had drank it, was miraculously cured,” at least, so we read in the “Miracles of Art and Nature,” Galen being referred to as the original authority for the story. The first essential in many of these ancient remedies appeared to be that they should be most improbable and unreasonable, and, secondly, that they should be as repulsive as possible.