Note 165 — Chapter XII
Reading edition
The ancients used it largely as a medicine. Cows’ milk was for this purpose not only used, but preferred as more aromatic. It was applied externally for all diseases of the skin, abstinence from animal food being at the same time enjoined. It was prescribed at Rome for ague; in Arcadia it was given for atrophy and gout; it was considered an antidote to various poisons, and a specific for hardness of the spleen. Uncooked, it was held to be unwholesome; a prejudice still subsisting in the East.