CHAP. 72.—REMEDIES FOR AFFECTIONS OF THE SINEWS AND FOR CONTUSIONS.
For pains in the sinews, goats’ dung, boiled in vinegar with honey, is considered one of the most useful remedies, and this even where the sinew2382 is threatened with putrefaction. Strains and contusions are healed with wild boars’ dung, that has been gathered in spring and dried. A similar method is employed where persons have been dragged by a chariot or lacerated by the wheels, or have received contusions in any other way, the application being quite as effectual, should the dung happen to be fresh. Some think it a better plan, however, to boil it in vinegar; and if only powdered and taken in vinegar, they vouch for its good effects where persons are ruptured, wounded internally, or suffering from the effects of a fall.
Others again, who are of a more scrupulous tendency,2383 take the ashes of it in water; and the Emperor Nero, it is said, was in the habit of refreshing himself with this drink, when he attempted to gain the public applause at the three-horse chariot races.2384 Swine’s dung, it is generally thought, is the next best to that of the goat.