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.