himself with wisely stigmatising that class of
receipts as vain and empirical which are not
recommended by legitimate authority.

As the effect that a story produces very
much depends upon the manner in which it
is related, I have thought that the singular
remedies about to be cited cannot be more
appropriately presented than in the quaint
language employed by Dr. Philemon
Holland, who, three years before the death of Queen
Elizabeth, translated the Natural History of
Pliny into the English vernacular; the more
particularly, because those for whom he made
the translation implicitly believed in the efficacy
of the prescriptions thus newly set before
them.

The "falling sickness," or epilepsy, to which
Cæsar and Mahomet were subject, was a
malady greatly feared by our own ancestors as well
as by the antique Romans; but it was easy of
cure, after the following fashion: "The braines
of an asse first dried in the smoke of certain
leaves" (there's the villany, though; what
leaves?), "drunk to the weight of half an ounce
every day in honied water, is good against the
falling evil. Some give counsell to eat the
heart of a black he asse, together with bread;
but in any wise it must be done abroad in the
open aire, and when the moon is but one or two
days old at the most." But, without sacrificing
asses, whether black or white, there were much
simpler modes of proceeding. Philistion
advises a decoction of the "wandering parsnep,"
or staphylinus; while Pliny himself observes
that "there is a deepe and settled opinion
among men" that the disease may be cured "if
a man or woman do ordinarily take garlick with
meat and drink;" a remedy sure to find favour
in the south of France and in Spain. The juice
of wild rue, the seed of "peniroiall," a cataplasm
made of anise and parsley, the wild poppy beaten
in a mortar and taken with white wine, a composite
mixture of mustard, cucumber-juice, cummin,
and figs, a spoonful of fennel-seeds at certain
periods of the moon, a garland of violets, a drink
made of thyme, a particular kind of "tadstole"
boiled in wine, the vinegar of the squill, or sea
onion, and a great variety of preparations of other
herbs and roots, are all declared to be more or
less efficacious. But, there were other remedies
equally potent, though perhaps not so easily
procured. For instance: The gall of a lion
mixed with water, provided the patient, "so
soon as he hath taken it, run a while for to
digest the same;" the "bloud of a weazill"
pulverised with snail-shells; the rough warts
growing to the legs of mules, taken in oxymel;
a stellion, or lizard, "rosted upon a wooden
broch, or spit;" "the taile of a dragon bound
within a buck or doe's skin to some part of the
body with the sinews of a stag or hind." Or, if
such a simple thing as a dragon were not come-at-able,
then you might cure the falling sickness by
tying "unto the left arme the little stones that
be taken out of the craw or gisier of young
swallows." The reason for employing this
remedy is thus stated: "For it is said that so
soon as the old swallow hath hatched her
birds, she giveth them such little stones to
swallow downe; but, in case this dose be taken
in the very beginning, and that the first time
hat one is falne of this disease there be given to
him for to eate the young swallow that the dam
hatched first" (how are you to find this out?),
"he shall be delivered from it clearly, and never
have more fits." The list is not quite
exhausted: "Much talk there is also of a kite's
liver, that it should be of singular operation to
this effect, if it be eaten; as also of a serpent's
old skin which she hath cast off, that it will do
no lesse." Also, "the heart of a vulture stampt
together with its own bloud, and given in drink
three weeks together, worketh wonders in this
disease. So doth the heart of the young bird of
a vulture, if the patient weare it about his arme,
or hang it at his necke; but then they give
counsell" (I am afraid these are the magicians
not much to be relied on) "to eat the flesh of
the vulture itselfe, and especially when he hath
eaten his ful of mans flesh."

Gout was a comparatively new ailment when
Pliny wrote; yet, from the number of remedies
resorted to against it, it must have made rapid
progress. Pliny confesses that: "The time
hath bin when it was no common a disease, as
now it is." Nor is this much to be wondered
at when we recollect the luxurious Roman
suppers, and the "calices majores," which the
hard drinkers filled to the brim with Chian,
Alban, and Falernian wine. "It were very
good," says Pliny, speaking of gouty subjects,
"for the easement of their griefe, eftsoons to
lay thereto frogs, fresh and new taken; mary,
the best way, by the direction of Physitians, is
to split them through, and so to apply them
warme." In another place he recommends a
broth made of the sea scorpion, "sodden with
dill, parsley, coriander, and leeks, putting thereto
oile and salt;" also "the broth or decoction of
a tortoise" (turtle soup, which one would
suppose to be a cause of gout, and not its cure);
split mice, laid hot to the afflicted joint; dogs'
gall, the place to be anointed with a feather;
viper's grease, or the powder of a dried viper
calcined in a new earthen pot; sheep's suet,
tempered with the ashes of a dog's head; and a liniment
made with "the ashes of the wild wood-mice
mixt with hony." As in old cookery books you
are taught how to dress the same meat "another
way," so you may please yourself, according to
Pliny, with half a hundred different anti-podagral
prescriptions. "A Cerot made of Beares
grease, Buls tallow" (identical unguents in
modern times), "and wax, of each an equall
quantity, is singular good for the gout in the
feet;" and "some there are of this opinion,
that the gout of the feet will be assuaged,
in case a man cut off the foot of a quick hare
and carrie it about him continually." We have
known ladies who carried the foot of a hare
continually about them, not because of the
gout.

There are not many people now-a-days who,
if they were laid up by a sudden fit of gout,