CHAP. 34.—TWELVE REMEDIES DERIVED FROM CHEESE.
We have already2262 spoken of the different kinds of cheese when treating of the mamillæ and other parts of animals. Sextius attributes the same properties to mares’ milk cheese that he does to cheese made of cows’ milk: to the former he gives the names of “hippace.” Cheese is best for the stomach when not salted, or, in other words, when new cheese is used. Old [salted] cheese has a binding effect upon the bowels, and reduces the flesh, but is more wholesome to the stomach [than new salted cheese]. Indeed, we may pronounce of aliments in general, that salt meats reduce the system, while fresh food has a tendency to make flesh. Fresh cheese, applied with honey, effaces the marks of bruises. It acts, also, emolliently upon the bowels; and, taken in the form of tablets, boiled in astringent wine and then toasted with honey on a platter, it modifies and alleviates griping pains in the bowels.
The cheese known as “saprum,”2263 is beaten up, in wine, with salt and dried sorb apples, and taken, in drink, for the cure of cœliac affections. Goats’ milk cheese, pounded and applied to the part affected, is a cure for carbuncle of the generative organs; sour cheese,2264 also, with oxymel, is productive of a similar effect. In the bath it is used as a friction, alternately with oil, for the removal of spots.