Page:The place of magic in the intellectual history of Europe.djvu/54

46 marvelous than those w'hich he has attributed to animals. There is one plant which, held in the hand, has a beneficial effect upon the groin; another overcomes the asp with torpor, and hence, beaten up with oil, is a remedy for the sting of that snake. Fern, he says, if mowed down with the edge of a reed or uprooted by a ploughshare on which a reed has been placed, will not spring up again. Moreover, in his twenty-fourth book, immediately after having announced that he has sufficiently discussed for the present the marvelour properties attributed to herbs by the magi, he proceeds to mention the following remedies. One is a quick cure for headache, and consists in gathering a plant growing on the head of a statue and attaching it to your neck with a red string. Another is a cure for tertian fever, and consists in plucking a certain herb before sunrise on the banks of a stream and in fastening it to the patient's left arm without his knowledge. A third recipe instructs us that plants which have taken root in a sieve that has been thrown into a hedge-row "decerptae adalligataeque gravidis partus adcelerant." A fourth would have herbs growing on dung-hills a cure for quinzy, and a fifth assures us that sprains may be speedily cured by the application of a plant "iuxta quam canes urinam fundunt," torn up by the roots and not allowed to touch iron.

Coming to minerals we find Pliny rather more reticent in regard to strange qualities. His account of gems is written mainly from the jeweler's point of view. When marvelous powers are mentioned, the magi are usually made