Page:The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800.djvu/71

 Around the corpse he stalk'd, this way and that, His spear and buckler round before him held, To all who dar'd approach him threatening death, With fearful shouts; a rocky fragment then Tydides lifted up, a mighty mass, Which scarce two men could raise, as men are now: But he, unaided, lifted it with ease. With this he smote Aeneas near the groin, Where the thigh bone, inserted in the hip, Turns in the socket joint; the rugged mass The socket crushed, and both the tendons broke, And tore away the flesh: down on his knees, Yet resting on his hand, the hero fell; And o'er his eyes the shades of darkness spread.

(The Iliad, Book V., Lines 333-356.)

He said, and passing his supporting hand Beneath his [Eurypylus'] breast, the wounded warrior led Within the tent; th' attendant saw, and spread The ox-hide couch; then as he lay reclined, Patroclus, with his dagger, from the thigh Cut out the biting shaft; and from the wound With tepid water cleans'd the clotted blood; Then, pounded in his hands, a root applied Astringent, anodyne, which all his pain Allayed; the wound was dried, and stanch'd the blood.

(The Iliad, Book XI., Lines 958-967.)

But Jove-born Helen otherwise, meantime, Employed, into the wine of which they drank A drug infused, antidote to the pains Of grief and anger, a most potent charm For ills of every name. Whoe'er his wine So medicated drinks, he shall not pour All day the tears down his wan cheeks, although His father and his mother both were dead, Nor even though his brother or his son Had fallen in battle, and before his eyes.

(Book IV. of the Odyssey, Lines 275-284.)