For dropsy, a will boar's urine is good, taken in small doses
in the patient's drink; it is of much greater efficacy, however,
when it has been left to dry in the bladder of the animal. The
ashes, too, of burnt cow-dung, and of bulls' dung in particular
—animals that are reared in herds, I mean—are highly esteemed.
This dung, the name given to which is "bolbiton,"[1] is re-
duced to ashes, and taken in doses of three spoonfuls to one
semisextarius of honied wine; that of the female animal being
used where the patient is a woman, and that of the other sex
in the case of males; a distinction about which the magicians
have made a sort of grand mystery. The dung of a bull-calf is
also applied topically for this disease, and ashes of burnt calves'
dung are taken with seed of staphylinos,[2] in equal proportions,
in wine. Goats' blood also is used, with the marrow; but it
is generally thought that the blood of the he-goat is the most
efficacious, when the animal has fed upon lentisk, more particularly.
1.
2.