We will begin then with man, and our first enquires will be into the resources which he provides for himself-a subject replete with boundless difficulties at the very outset.[1]
Epileptic patients are in the habit of drinking the blood even of gladiators, draughts teeming with life,[2] as it were; a thing that, when we see it done by the wild beasts even, upon the same arena, inspires us with horror at the spectacle! And yet these persons, forsooth, consider it a most effectual cure for their disease, to quaff the warm, breathing, blood from man himself, and, as they apply their mouth to the wound, to draw forth his very life; and this, though it is regarded as an act of impiety to apply the human lips to the wound even of a wild beast! Others there are, again, who make the marrow[3] of the leg-bones, and the brains of infants, the objects of their research!
Among the Greek writers, too, there are not a few who have
enlarged upon the distinctive flavours of each one of the viscera
and members of the human body, pursuing their researches
to the very parings of the nails! as though, forsooth, it could
Say, Osthanes,[5] who was it that first devised these practices; for it is thee that I accuse, thou uprooter of all human laws, thou inventor of these monstrosities; devised, no doubt, with the view that mankind might not forget thy name! Who was it that first thought of devouring each member of the human body? By what conjectural motives was he induced? What can possibly have been the origin of such a system of medicine as this? Who was it that thus made the very poisons less baneful than the antidotes prescribed for them? Granted that barbarous and outlandish tribes first devised such practices, must the men of Greece, too, adopt these as arts of their own?
We read, for instance, in the memoirs of Democritus, still
extant, that for some diseases, the skull of a malefactor is most
efficacious, while for the treatment of others, that of one who
has been a friend or guest is required. Apollonius, again, informs us in his writings, that the most effectual remedy for
tooth-ache is to scarify the gums with the tooth of a man who
has died a violent death; and, according to Miletus, human gall
is a cure for cataract.[6] For epilepsy, Artemon has prescribed
water drawn from a spring in the night, and drunk from the
skull of a man who has been slain, and whose body remains
unburnt. From the skull, too, of a man who had been hanged,
Antæus made pills that were to be an antidote to. the bite of;
mad dog. Even more than this, man has resorted to similar remedies for the cure of four-footed beasts even—for tympanitis in
oxen, for instance, the horns have been perforated, and human
bones inserted; and when swine have been found to be diseased,
Far from us, far too from our writings, be such prescriptions[7] as these! It will be for us to describe remedies only, and not abominations;[8] cases, for instance, in which the milk of a nursing woman may have a curative effect, cases where the human spittle may be useful, or the contact[9] of the human body, and other instances of a similar nature. We do not look upon life as so essentially desirable that it must be prolonged at any cost, be it what it may—and you, who are of that opinion, be assured, whoever you may be, that you will die none the less, even though you shall have lived in the midst of obscenities or abominations!
Let each then reckon this as one great solace to his mind, that of all the blessings which Nature has bestowed on man, there is none greater than the death[10] which comes at a seasonable hour; and that the very best feature in connexion with it is, that every person has it in his own power to procure it for himself.[11]
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