Note 19 — BOOK XXXII.1 REMEDIES DERIVED FROM AQUATIC ANIMALS.
John Bostock translation
A fabulous story, Ajasson remarks, but one that was commonly believed in the 16th and 17th centuries. Gessner, however, a conscientious enquirer into the mysteries of Nature, asserts (de Aquatilibus, p. 563) that, to his own knowledge, the sight of this fish was productive of the symptoms here mentioned. Beckmann reckons the Aplysia depilans (with which the Sea-hare of the ancients is identified) in the number of the animal poisons, and remarks that (as we find stated by Cœlius Rhodiginus, B. xxvi. c. 30) the Emperor Titus was dispatched by the agency of this poison, administered to him by the direction of his brother Domitian. Hist. Inv. vol. I. p. 51. Bohn’s Ed.