Note 438 — THIRD SECTION. Relation of the Physician to Diseases consequent upon the Use or Misuse of the Genital Organs. (continued 2)

Natalis Comes, Mythologia bk. III. p. 383., Deinde dicta (Cyprus) Cerastia, ut inquit Xenagoras in libro secundo de insulis, quod illam homines habitarent, qui multos tumores, tanquam cornua quaedam in capitibus habere viderentur, cum cornua κέρατα dicta sint a Graecis et κεράσται cornuti. (Then it (Cyprus) was also named Cerastia, as Xenagoras says in his second Book “On Islands”, because its inhabitants often had protuberances that looked like horns on their heads, for horns are called κέρατα in Greek, and those having horns κεράσται. Comp. Stephanus, De urbibus, under word Κύπρος, and Σφήκεια. Tzetzes, in Lycophron. Cassandr. 474. p. 173., ἐκαλεῖτο δὲ καὶ Κεραστία, ὡς μὲν Ἀνδροκλῆς ἐν τῷ περὶ Κύπρου λέγει, διὰ τὸ ἐνοικῆσαι αὐτῇ ἄνδρας, οἳ εἶχον κέρατα· ὡς δὲ Ξεναγόρας ἐν τῷ περὶ Νήσων, διὰ τὸ ἔχειν πολλὰς ἐξοχὰς, ἃς κέρατα καλοῦσι, Κεραστία ὠνομάσθη. (And it was also called Κεραστία, according to Androcles in his Book “On Cyprus”, because men lived in it who had horns; but according to Xenagoras in his “On Islands”, because they had many protuberances, which they call horns, for this reason it was named Κεραστία). Even supposing the etymology to be a fable, is the fact therefore on which it was based bound to be mythical too? Again Pollux, Onomast. bk. IV. ch. 25., says, Κέρατα, ἐν τῷ τόπῳ τῶν κεράτων περὶ τὸ μέτωπου πωρώδεις ἐκφύσης, (horns,—a sort of callous outgrowths at the place where horns grow on the forehead). The words succeeding περὶ τὸ δέρμα (on the skin) are no doubt more appropriately taken with ἕρπης (creeping eruption) that comes next after them. In Sextus Placitus Papyriensis, ch. XI. 5. we read: Elephantis stercus illitum omnes tumores emendat, et duritias, quae in fronte nascuntur, mire tollit, (Elephant’s dung rubbed on cures all swellings, and removes in a wonderful way the callosities that grow on the forehead), but this really and truly can only be held applicable to cutaneous tubercles.)