BOOK XXXII.1 REMEDIES DERIVED FROM AQUATIC ANIMALS. (continued 2)
John Bostock translation
CHAP. 45.—REMEDIES FOR WARTS, AND FOR MALFORMED NAILS. THE GLANIS: ONE REMEDY.
To remove warts, the liver of the glanis367 is applied to the part; ashes also of heads of mæmæ368 bruised with garlic—substances which should be used raw where it is thyme-warts369 that require to be removed—the gall of the red sea-scorpion,370 smarides371 pounded and applied, or alex372 thoroughly boiled. Ashes of calcined heads of mænæ373 are used to rectify malformed nails.
CHAP. 46.—REMEDIES FOR FEMALE DISEASES. THE GLAUCISCUS: ONE REMEDY.
The milk is increased in females by eating the glauciscus374 in its own liquor, or else smarides375 with a ptisan, or boiled with fennel. Ashes of calcined shells of the murex or purple, applied with honey, are an effectual cure for affections of the mamillæ; river-crabs, too, and sea-crabs, applied topically, are equally good. The meat of the murex, applied to the mamillæ, removes hairs376 growing upon those parts. The squatina,377 applied topically, prevents the mamillæ from becoming too distended. Lint greased with dolphin’s378 fat, and then ignited, produces a smoke which acts as an excitant upon females suffering from hysterical suffocations; the same, too, with strombi,379 left to putrefy in vinegar. Heads of perch or of mænæ,380 calcined and mixed with salt, oil, and cunila,381 are curative of diseases of the uterus: used as a fumigation, they bring away the afterbirth. Fat,382 too, of the sea-calf, melted by the agency of fire, is introduced into the nostrils of females when swooning from hysterical suffocations; and for a similar purpose, the rennet of that animal is applied as a pessary, in wool.
The pulmo marinus,383 attached to the body as an amulet, is an excellent promoter of menstruation; an effect which is equally produced by pounding live sea-urchins, and taking them in sweet wine. River-crabs,384 bruised in wine, and taken internally, arrest menstruation. The silurus,385 that of Africa386 more particularly, used as a fumigation, facilitates parturition, it is said. Crabs, taken in water, arrest menstruation; but used with hyssop, they act as an emmenagogue, we are told. In cases, too, where the infant is in danger of suffocation at the moment of delivery, a similar drink, administered to the mother, is highly efficacious. Crabs, too, either fresh or dried, are taken in drink, for the purpose of preventing abortion. Hippocrates387 prescribes them as a promoter of menstruation, and as an expellent of the dead fœtus, beaten up with five388 roots of lapathum and rue and some soot, and administered in honied wine. Crabs, boiled and taken in their liquor, with lapathum389 and parsley, promote the menstrual discharge, and increase the milk. In cases of fever, attended with pains in the head and throbbing of the eyes, crabs are said to be highly beneficial to females, given in astringent wine.
Castoreum,390 taken in honied wine, is useful as a promoter of menstruation: in cases of hysterical suffocation, it is given to the patient to smell at with pitch and vinegar, or else it is made up into tablets and used as a pessary. For the purpose also of bringing away the afterbirth it is found a useful plan to employ castoreum with panax,391 in four cyathi of wine; and in cases where the patient is suffering from cold, in doses of three oboli. If, however, a female in a state of pregnancy should happen to step over castoreum, or over the beaver itself, abortion, it is said, will be the sure result: so, too, if castoreum is only held over a pregnant woman’s head, there will be great danger of miscarriage.
There is a very marvellous fact, too, that I find stated in reference to the torpedo:392 if it is caught at the time that the moon is in Libra, and kept in the open air for three days, it will always facilitate parturition, as often as it is introduced into the apartment of a woman in labour. The sting, too, of the pastinaca,393 attached to the navel, is generally thought to have the property of facilitating delivery: it must be taken, however, from the fish while alive; which done, the fish must be returned to the sea. I find it stated by some authorities that there is a substance called “ostraceum,” which is also spoken of as “onyx”394 by others; that, used as a fumigation, it is wonderfully beneficial for suffocations of the uterus; that in smell it resembles castoreum, and is still more efficacious, if burnt with this last substance; and that in a calcined state it has the property of healing inveterate ulcers, and cancerous sores of a malignant nature. As to carbuncles and carcinomatous sores upon the secret parts of females, there is nothing more efficacious, it is said, than a female crab beaten up, just after full moon, with flower of salt395 and applied with water.
CHAP. 47.—METHODS OF REMOVING SUPERFLUOUS HAIR. DEPILATORIES.
Depilatories are prepared from the blood, gall, and liver of the tunny, either fresh or preserved; as also from pounded liver of the same fish, preserved with cedar resin396 in a leaden box; a recipe which we find given by the midwife Salpe397 for disguising the age of boys on sale for slaves. A similar property belongs to the pulmo marinus,398 to the blood and gall of the sea-hare, and to the sea-hare itself, stifled in oil. The same, too, with ashes of burnt crabs or sea scolopendræ,399 mixed with oil; sea-nettles,400 bruised in squill vinegar; and brains of the torpedo401 applied with alum on the sixteenth day of the moon. The thick matter emitted by the small frogs, which we have described when treating402 of eye-diseases, is a most efficient depilatory, if applied fresh: the same, too, with the frog itself, dried and pounded, and then boiled down to one-third in three heminæ of water, or else boiled in a copper vessel with oil in a like proportion. Others, again, prepare a depilatory from fifteen frogs, in manner already403 stated under the head of remedies for the eyes. Leeches, also, grilled in an earthen vessel, and applied with vinegar, have the same property as a depilatory; the very odour, too, which attaches to the persons who thus burn them is singularly efficacious for killing bugs.404 Cases are to be found, too, where persons have used castoreum with honey, for many days together, as a depilatory. In the case, however, of every depilatory, the hairs should always be removed before it is applied.
CHAP. 48.—REMEDIES FOR THE DISEASES OF INFANTS.
Dentition in infants is promoted, and the gums greatly relieved, by rubbing them with ashes of a dolphin’s teeth, mixed with honey, or else by touching the gums with the tooth itself of that fish. One of these teeth, worn as an amulet, is a preventive of sudden frights;405 the tooth of the dog-fish406 being also possessed of a similar property. As to ulcers which make their appearance in the ears, or in any other parts of the body, they may be cured by applying the liquor of river-crabs,407 with barley-meal. These crabs, too, bruised in oil and employed as a friction, are very useful for other kinds of maladies. A sponge moistened with cold water from time to time,408 or a frog applied, the back part to the head, is a most efficacious cure for siriasis409 in infants. When the frog is removed, it will be found quite dry, they say.
CHAP. 49.—METHODS OF PREVENTING INTOXICATION. THE FISH CALLED RUBELLIO: ONE REMEDY. THE EEL: ONE REMEDY. THE GRAPE-FISH: ONE REMEDY.
A surmullet410 stifled in wine; the fish called “rubellio;”411 or a couple of eels similarly treated; or a grapefish,412 left to putrefy in wine, all of them, produce an aversion to wine in those who drink thereof.
CHAP. 50.—ANTAPHRODISIACS AND APHRODISIACS. THE HIPPOPOTAMUS: ONE REMEDY. THE CROCODILE: ONE REMEDY.
In the number of antaphrodisiacs, we have the echeneïs;413 the skin from the left side of the forehead of the hippopotamus,414 attached to the body in lamb-skin; and the gall of a live torpedo,415 applied to the generative organs.
The following substances act as aphrodisiacs—the flesh of river-snails, preserved in salt and given to drink in wine; the erythinus416 taken as food; the liver of the frog called “diopetes” or “calamites”417 attached to the body in a small piece of crane’s skin; the eye-tooth of a crocodile, attached to the arm; the hippocampus;418 and the sinews of a bramble-frog,419 worn as an amulet upon the right arm. A bramble-frog, attached to the body in a piece of fresh sheep-skin, effectually puts an end to love.
CHAP. 51.—REMEDIES FOR THE DISEASES OF ANIMALS.
A decoction of frogs in water, reduced to the form of a liniment, is curative of itch-scab in horses; indeed, it is said, that a horse, when once treated in this manner, will never again be attacked with the disease. Salpe says that if a live frog is given to dogs in their mess, they will lose the power of barking.
CHAP. 52.—OTHER AQUATIC PRODUCTIONS. ADARCA OR CALAMOCHNOS: THREE REMEDIES. REEDS: EIGHT REMEDIES. THE INK OF THE SÆPIA.
Among the aquatic productions ought also to be mentioned calamochnos, in Latin known as “adarca,”420 a substance which collects about small reeds, from a mixture of the foam of fresh and of sea water. It possesses certain caustic properties, and hence it is that it is so useful as an ingredient in “acopa”421 and as a remedy for cold shiverings; it is used too, for removing freckles upon the face of females. And now we are speaking of adarca, the reed ought equally to be mentioned. The root of that known as the “phragmites,”422 pounded fresh, is curative of sprains, and, applied topically with vinegar, removes pains in the spine. The calcined bark, too, of the Cyprian423 reed, known as the “donax,” is curative of alopecy and inveterate ulcers; and its leaves are good for the extraction of foreign bodies adhering to the flesh, and for the cure of erysipelas: should, however, the flower of the panicle happen to enter the ears, deafness424 is the consequence.
The ink of the sæpia425 is possessed of such remarkable potency, that if it is put into a lamp, Anaxilaüs tells us, the light will become entirely changed,426 and all present will look as black as Æthiopians. The bramble-frog, boiled in water, and given to swine with their drink, is curative of the maladies with which they are affected; an effect equally produced by the ashes of any other kind of frog. If wood is rubbed with the pulmo marinus,427 it will have all the appearance of being on fire; so much so, indeed, that a walking-stick, thus treated, will light the way like a torch.428
CHAP. 53. (11.)—THE NAMES OF ALL THE ANIMALS THAT EXIST IN THE SEA, ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-SIX IN NUMBER.
Having now completed our exposition of the properties which belong to the aquatic productions, it would appear by no means foreign to my purpose to give a list of the various animated beings which inhabit the seas; so many as these are in number, of such vast extent, and not only making their way into the interior of the land to a distance of so many miles, but also surrounding the exterior of it to an extent almost equal to that of the world itself. These animals, it is generally considered, embrace one hundred and seventy-six different429 species, and it will be my object to set them forth, each by its distinct name, a thing that cannot possibly be done in reference to the terrestrial animals and the birds.
For, in fact, we are by no means acquainted with all the wild beasts or all the birds that are to be found in India, Æthiopia, Scythia, or the desert regions of the earth; and even of man himself there are numerous varieties, which as yet we have been unable430 to make ourselves acquainted with. In addition, too, to the various countries above mentioned, we have Taprobane431 and other isles of the Ocean, about which so many fabulous stories are related. Surely then, every one must allow that it is quite impossible to comprise every species of animal in one general view for the information of mankind. And yet, by Hercules! in the sea and in the Ocean, vast as it is, there exists nothing that is unknown to us,432 and, a truly marvellous fact, it is with those things which Nature has concealed in the deep that we are the best acquainted!
To begin then with the monsters433 that are found in this element. We here find sea-trees,434 physeters,435 balænæ,436 pistrices,437 tritons,438 nereids,439 elephants,440 the creatures known as sea-men,441 sea-wheels,442 orcæ,443 sea-rams,444 musculi,445 other fish too with the form of rams,446 dolphins,447 sea-calves,448 so celebrated by Homer,449 tortoises450 to minister to our luxury, and beavers, so extensively employed in medicine,451 to which class belongs the otter,452 an animal which we nowhere find frequenting the sea, it being only of the marine animals that we are speaking. There are dog-fish,453 also, drinones,454 cornutæ,455 swordfish,456 saw-fish,457 hippopotami458 and crocodiles,459 common to the sea, the land, and the rivers; tunnies460 also, thynnides, siluri,461 coracini,462 and perch,463 common to the sea only and to rivers.
To the sea only, belong also the acipenser,464 the dorade,465 the asellus,466 the acharne,467 the aphye,468 the alopex,469 the eel,470 the araneus,471 the boca,472 the batia,473 the bacchus,474 the batrachus,475 the belonæ,476 known to us as “aculeati,”477 the balanus,478 the corvus,479 the citharus, the least esteemed of all the turbots, the chalcis,480 the cobio,481 the callarias,482 which would belong to the genus of the aselli483 were it not smaller; the colias,484 otherwise known as the fish of Parium485 or of Sexita,486 this last from a place of that name in Bætica its native region, the smallest, too, of the lacerti;487 the colias of the Mæotis, the next smallest of the lacerti; the cybium,488 (the name given, when cut into pieces, to the pelamis489 which returns at the end of forty days from the Euxine to the Palus Mæotis); the cordyla490—which is also a small pelamis, so called at the time when it enters the Euxine from the Palus Mæotis—the cantharus,491 the callionymus492 or uranoscopus, the cinædus, the only493 fish that is of a yellow colour; the cnide, known to us as the sea-nettle;494 the different kinds of crabs,495 the striated chemæ,496 the smooth chemæ, the chemæ belonging to the genus of pelorides,497 all differing in the variety of their colours and in the roundness of the shells; the chemæ glycymarides,498 still larger than the pelorides; the coluthia or coryphia;499 the various kinds of shellfish, among which we find the pearl oysters,500 the cochleæ,501 (belonging to which class are the pentadactyli,502) the helices,503 by some known as actinophori, the spokes504 on whose shells are used for musical purposes;505 and, in addition to these, the round cochleæ, the shells of which are used in measuring oil, as also the sea-cucumber,506 the cynopos,507 the cammarus,508 and the cynosdexia.509
Next to these we have the sea-dragon,510 a fish which, according to some, is altogether distinct from the dracunculus,511 and resembles the gerricula in appearance, it having on the gills a stickle which points towards the tail and inflicts a wound like that of the scorpion512 when the fish is handled—the erythinus,513 the echeneïs,514 the sea-urchin,515 the sea-elephant, a black kind of crayfish, with four forked legs, in addition to two arms with double joints, and furnished, each of them, with a pair of claws, indented at the edge; the faber,516 also, or zæus, the glauciscus,517 the glanis,518 the gonger,519 the gerres,520 the galeos,521 the garos,522 the hippos,523 the hippuros,524 the hirundo,525 the halipleumon,526 the hippocampus,527 the hepar,528 the ictinus529 and the iulis.530 There are various kinds also of lacerti,531 the springing loligo,532 the crayfish,533 the lantern-fish,534 the lepas,535 the larinus, the sea-hare,536 and the sea-lion,537 with arms like those of the crab, and in the other parts of the body like the cray-fish.
We have the surmullet538 also, the sea black-bird,539 highly esteemed among the rock-fish; the mullet,540 the melanurus,541 the mæna,542 the mæotis,543 the muræna,544 the mys,545 the mitulus,546 the myiscus,547 the murex,548 the oculata,549 the ophidion,550 the oyster,551 the otia,552 the orcynus—the largest of all the pelamides553 and one that never returns to the Palus Mæotis, like the tritomus554 in appearance, and best when old—the orbis,555 the orthagoriscus,556 the phager,557 the phycis558 a rock-fish, the pelamis,559 (the largest kind of which is called “apolectum,”560 and is tougher than the tritomus) the sea-pig,561 the phthir,562 the sea-sparrow,563 the pastinaca,564 the several varieties of the polyp,565 the scallop,566 which is larger and more swarthy in summer than at other times, and the most esteemed of which are those of Mitylene,567 Tyndaris,568 Salonæ,569 Altinum,570 the island of Chios, and Alexandria in Egypt; the small scallop,571 the purple,572 the pegris,573 the pinna,574 the pinnotheres,575 the rhine576 or squalus of the Latins, the turbot,577 the scarus,578 a fish which holds the first rank at the present day; the sole,579 the sargus,580 the squilla,581 the sarda582—such being the name of an elongated pelamis583 which comes from the Ocean; the scomber,584 the salpa,585 the sorus,586 the scorpæna,587 the sea-scorpion,588 the solas,589 the sciæna,590 the sciadeus,591 the scolopendra,592 the smyrus,593 the sæpia,594 the strombus,595 the solen,596 otherwise known as the aulos, donax, onyx or dactylus; the spondylus,597 the smaris,598 the starfish,599 and the sponges.600 There is the sea-thrush601 also, famous among the rock-fish, the thynnis,602 the thranis, by some writers known as the xiphias;603 the thrissa,604 the torpedo,605 the tethea,606 the tritomus, a large kind of pelamis,607 which admits of being cut into three cybia;608 the shells of Venus,609 the grape-fish,610 and the xiphias.611
CHAP. 54.—ADDITIONAL NAMES OF FISHES FOUND IN THE POEM OF OVID.
To the above enumeration we will add some names given in the poem of Ovid,612 which are not to be found in any other writer: species, however, which are probably peculiar to the Euxine, on the shores613 of which he commenced that work towards the close of his life. The fishes thus mentioned by him are the sea-ox, the cercyrus, that dwells among the rocks, the orphus,614 the red erythinus,615 the iulus,616 the tinted mormyr, the chrysophrys617 a fish of a golden colour, the parus,618 the tragus,619 the melanurus620 remarkable for the beauty of its tail, and the epodes,621 a flat fish.
In addition to these remarkable kinds of fishes, the same poet tells us that the channes622 conceives of itself, that the glaucus623 never makes its appearance in summer, that the pompilus624 always accompanies vessels in their course, and that the chromis625 makes its nest in the water. The helops, he says, is unknown to our waters; from which it would appear that those are in error who look upon it as identical with our acipenser.626 Many persons have given the preference to the helops before all other fish, in point of flavour.
There are several fishes also, which have been mentioned by no author; such, for instance, as the one called “sudis” by the Latins, and “sphyrene” by the Greeks, names which indicate the peculiar form of its muzzle.627 It is one of the very largest kinds, but rarely found, and by no means of inferior flavour. “Perna,” too, is the name given to a kind of shell-fish, found in vast numbers in the vicinity of the islands of the Euxine. These fish are found firmly planted in the sand, resembling in appearance the long shank628 of a hog. Opening wide their shells, where there is sufficient space, they lie in wait for their prey; this opening being not less than a foot in breadth, and the edges of it garnished around with teeth closely set, much resembling the teeth of a comb in form. Within the shell, the meat consists of a vast lump of flesh. I once saw, too, a fish called the “hyæna,”629 which had been caught off the island of Ænaria.630
In addition to these animals, there are certain excretions thrown up by the sea, which do not merit any further notice, and indeed ought to be reckoned among the sea-weeds, rather than looked upon as animated beings.
Summary.—Remedies, narratives, and observations, nine hundred and ninety.