memorant invenisse: sed Sorani iudicio videntur hi mentis vanitate iactari, qui modulis et cantilena passionis robur excludi posse crediderunt."[1]
Plinius.Plinius records that the rule is to sow basil with curses and ugly words;[2] that pills of elaterium, the drastic juice of a wild cucumber, hung about the waist in rams wool, help parturition, if the patient knows nothing about the resource;[3] he knew a man of prætorian rank, a chief man in Spain, who was cured of intolerable disorders of the uvula by carrying hung to his neck by a thread a root of purslane;[4] that Sappho fell in love with Phaon because he found a masculine root of eryngium;[5] that an amulet of the seed of tribulus cures varicose veins;[6] that tradition avers men afflicted with tertian fever are relieved of it if they tie on themselves a root of autumnal nettle, provided that when the root is dug the sick mans and his parents names are duly pronounced aloud;[7] that if a man carry a poplar wand in his hand he will not get his legs chafed;[8] the herb selago, which was like savine, was gathered without use of iron, with the right hand, in pickpocket fashion, "velut a furante," poked through the left armhole of the tunic, in a white robe, with naked clean washed feet, after an oblation of wine and bread.[9] Since ordinary "clinic" medicine avails not in quartan fevers, he will tell us how to cure it by amulets; by the dust in which a hawk has been rolling himself tied up in a bit of cloth with a red thread; by the longest tooth of a black dog; by a solitary wasp caught in the left hand
