CHAP. 67. (17.)—REMEDIES FOR MELANCHOLY, LETHARGY, AND PHTHSIS.

For patients affected with melancholy,[1] calves' dung, boiled in wine, is a very useful remedy. Persons are aroused from lethargy by applying to the nostrils the callosities from an ass's legs steeped in vinegar, or the fumes of burnt goats' horns or hair, or by the application of a wild boar's liver: a remedy which is also used for confirmed[2] drowsiness.

The cure of phthisis is effected by taking a wolf's liver boiled in thin wine; the bacon of a sow that has been fed upon herbs; or the flesh of a she-ass, eaten with the broth: this last mode in particular, being the one that is employed by the people of Achaia. They say too, that the smoke of dried cow-dung—that of the animal when grazing, I mean-is remarkably good for phthisis, inhaled through a reed;[3] and we find it stated that the tips of cows' horns are burnt, and administered with honey, in doses of two spoonfuls, in the form of pills. Goat suet, many persons say, taken in a pottage of alica,[4] or melted fresh with honied wine, in the proportion of one ounce of suet to one cyathus of wine, is good for cough and phthisis, care being taken to stir the mixture with a sprig of rue. One author of credit assures us that before now, a patient whose recovery has been despaired of; has been restored to health by taking one cyathus of wild goat[5] suet and an equal quantity of milk. Some writers, too, have stated that ashes of burnt swine's dung are very useful, mixed with raisin wine; as also the lights of a deer, a spitter[6] deer in particular, smoke-dried and beaten up in wine.

1. Under this name, as Ajasson remarks, the affections now called "hysteria" are included.

2. "Veternum."

3. Another instance of smoking, though not a very tempting one.

4. See B. xviii. c. 29.

5. "Rupicapra."

6. "Subulo."