CHAP. 56.—REMEDIES FOR PAINS IN THE LOINS.
For pains in the loins and all other affections which require emollients, frictions with bears’ grease should be used; or else ashes of stale boars’ dung or swine’s dung should be mixed with wine and given to the patients. The magicians, too, have added to this branch of medicine their own fanciful devices. In the first place of all, madness in he-goats, they say, may be effectually calmed by stroking the beard; and if the beard is cut off, the goat will never stray to another flock.
To the above composition they add goats’ dung, and recommend it to be held in the hollow of the hand, as hot as possible, a greased linen cloth being placed beneath, and care being taken to hold it in the right hand if the pain is on the left side, and in the left hand if the pain is on the right. They recommend also that the dung employed for this purpose should be taken up on the point of a needle made of copper. The mode of treatment is, for the patient to hold the mixture in his hand till the heat is felt to have penetrated to the loins, after which the hand is rubbed with a pounded leek, and the loins with the same dung annealed with honey. They prescribe also for the same malady the testes of a hare, to be eaten by the patient. In cases of sciatica they are for applying cow-dung warmed upon hot ashes in leaves: and for pains in the kidneys they recommend a hare’s kidneys to be swallowed raw, or perhaps boiled, but without letting them be touched by the teeth. If a person carries about him the pastern-bone of a hare, he will never be troubled with pains in the bowels, they say.