Page:Ancient India as described by Megasthenês and Arrian.djvu/113

 94 Homer tells us, Patroklos treated the wound of Eurypylos, — they foment them with lukewarm water.^ After this they rub them over with but- ter, and if they are deep allay the inflammation by applying and inserting pieces of pork, hot but still retaining the blood. They cure ophthalmia with cows' milk, which is first used as a foment- ation for the eye, and is then injected into it. The animals open their eyelids, and finding they can see better are delighted, and are sensible of the benefit like human beings. In proportion as their blindness diminishes their delight over- fiiows, and this is a token that the disease has been cured. The remedy for other distempers to which they are liable is black wine ; and if this potion fails to work a euro nothing else can save them. Fragm. XXXIX. Strab. XV. 1. 44,— p. 706. Of Oold'digging Ants,* Megasthenfe gives the following account of these ants. Among the Derdai, a great tribe of Indians, who inhabit the mountains on the f See Iliad, bk. XI. 845. • See Ind. Ant. vol. IV. pp. 225 seqq, where cogent argu- ments are addnoed to prove that the * gold-digging ants* were originally neither, as the ancients supposed, real ants, nor, as so many eminent men of learning have supposed, larger animals mistaken for ants on account of their ap- pearance and subterranean habits, but Tibetan miners, whose mode of life and dress was in the remotest antiquity exactly what they are at the present day.