For pains in the sinews, goats' dung, boiled in vinegar with honey, is considered one of the most useful remedies, and this even where the sinew[1] is threatened with putrefaction. Strains and contusions are healed with wild boars' dung, that has been gathered in spring and dried. A similar method is employed where persons have been dragged by a chariot or lacerated by the wheels, or have received contusions in any other way, the application being quite as effectual, should the dung happen to be fresh. Some think it a better plan, however, to boil it in vinegar; and if only powdered and taken in vinegar, they vouch for its good effects where persons are ruptured, wounded internally, or suffering from the effects of a fall.

Others again, who are of a more scrupulous tendency,[2] take the ashes of it in water; and the Emperor Nero, it is said, was in the habit of refreshing himself with this drink, when he attempted to gain the public applause at the three-horse chariot races.[3] Swine's dung, it is generally thought, is the next best to that of the goat.