Page:Illustrations of Madness.djvu/17

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
viii
preface.

again here refer, has a particular relation to the whole of this subject :


Corripio è stratis corpus, tendoque supinas 176
Ad-cœlum cum voce manus, et munera libo
Intemerata focis : perfecto lætus honore
Anchisen facio certum remque ordine pando.
Agnovit prolem ambiguam geminosque parentes
Seque novo veteruin deceptum errore locorum.
Tum memorat—

the meaning of which I venture to unriddle as follows : supposing (to speak as Virgil does, in the first person) I have a patient attacked by a contagious pestilential disease (its contagion being implied by the litter of straw, è stratis, in which he lies), I take up his body from thence, without a moment’s delay (corripio), and curry it (corripio), or tan it (tendo), from the back and spine (as implied perhaps by the French dos, tergum, in tendo, and by supinas) to the poll or hollow part of the head (that hollow part being pointed to by the Greek word ϰοιλον, idem quod cœlum), or, in other words, by administering the bark externally to those parts (the bark being implied in the word manus, by a reference to the