Page:Leechdoms wortcunning and starcraft of early England volume 1.djvu/29

 memorant invenisse: sed Sorani iudicio videntur hi mentis vanitate iactari, qui modulis et cantilena passionis robur excludi posse crediderunt."

Plinius records that the rule is to sow basil with curses and ugly words; 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; 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; that Sappho fell in love with Phaon because he found a masculine root of eryngium; that an amulet of the seed of tribulus cures varicose veins; 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; that if a man carry a poplar wand in his hand he will not get his legs chafed; 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. 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