§ 1  Even though the peoples from whom you and I, Protagoras, have derived our births did not set up the walls of their strong towers side by side in Asia, and a great space separates us, yet I can easily instruct you in the remedies for those draughts of poison which attack men and bring them low. You indeed have made your home by the tempestuous sea beneath polar Arctus, where are the caverns of Lobrinian Rhea and the place of the secret rites of Attes; while I dwell where the sons of the far-famed Creusa

§ 10  divided among themselves the richest portion of the mainland, settling by the tripods of the Shooter [Hekatos/Apollo] in Clarus.
You must, to be sure, learn of the aconite, bitter as gall, deadly in the mouth, which the banks of Acheron put forth. There is the abyss of Eubouleus [wise counsellor/Hades] whence few escape, and there the towns of Priolas fell crashing in ruins.
All the drinker's jaws and the roof of his mouth and his gums are constricted by the bitter draught, as it wraps itself about the top of the chest, crushing with evil choking the man in the throes of heartburn. The top of the belly is gripped with pain -

§ 20  the swelling, open mouth of the lower stomach, which some call the 'heart' of the digestive vessel, others the 'receiver' of the stomach - and the gate is closed immediately upon the beginning of the intestines where a man's food in all its abundance is carried in. And all the while from his streaming eyes drips the moisture; and his belly sore shaken vainly throws up wind, and much of it settles below about his mid-navel; and in his head is a grievous weight, and there ensues a rapid throbbing beneath his temples, and with his eyes he sees things double, like a man at night overcome with unmixed wine.

§ 30  And as when the Silens, the nurses of the horned Dionysus, crushed the wild grapes, and having for the first time fortified their spirits with the foaming drink, were confused in their sight and on reeling feet rushed madly about the hill of Nysa, even so is the sight of these men darkened beneath the weight of evil doom. This plant men call also Mouse-bane, for it utterly destroys troublesome, nibbling mice; but some call it Leopard's-choke, since cowherds and goatherds with it contrive the death of those great beasts

§ 40  amid the glades of Ida in the vale of Phalacra. Again they name it Woman-killer and Crayfish. And the deadly aconite flourishes amid the Aconaean mountains.
For one so poisoned, gypsum to the weight of a handful will perhaps be a protection, if you draw thereto tawny wine in due measure with the gypsum reduced to fine powder - let it be a full cotyle of wine - and add stalks of wormwood, cutting them from the shrub, or of bright green horehound which they call Honeyleaf; administer also a shoot of the herbaceous, evergreen spurge-olive and rue, quenching in vinegar and honey

§ 50  a red-hot lump of metal between the jaws of the fire-tongs, or dross of iron which the flame of the fire has separated within the melting-pot in the furnace; or sometimes just after warming in the fire a lump of gold or silver you should plunge it in the turbid draught. Or again you should take leaves, half a handful's weight, of the ground pine; or a dry sprig of pot marjoram from the hills, or cut a fresh spray of field basil, and cover them in four cyathi of honey-sweet wine. Or you may take some broth, still meaty and undiluted, made from a domestic fowl

§ 60  when the forcible glow of the fire beneath the pot reduces the body to pieces. Also you should render down the fresh meat of an ox abounding in fat and satisfy the stomach to its full capacity with the soup. Again, sometimes you should pour the juice of balsam into some drops of milk from a young girl, or else into water, until the patient discharges from his throat the undigested food. Sometimes too you should cut out the curd from the stomach of the nimble beast that sleeps open-eyed {hare}, or of a fawn, and give it mixed in wine; at other times cast the roots of the purple mulberry into the hollow of a mortar,

§ 70  bray them mingled with wine, and give them boiled in the labours of the bee. Thus may you ward off loathsome sickness though it threaten to master a man, and he may once again walk on unfaltering feet.
In the second place consider the hateful brew compounded with gleaming, deadly white lead whose fresh colour is like milk which foams all over when you milk it rich in the springtime into the deep pails. Over the victim's jaws and in the grooves of the gums is plastered an astringent froth, and the furrow of the tongue turns rough on either side,

§ 80  and the depth of the throat grows somewhat dry, and from the pernicious venom follows a dry retching and hawking, for this is severe; meanwhile his spirit sickens and he is worn out with mortal suffering. His body too grows chill, while sometimes his eyes behold strange illusions or else he drowses; nor can he bestir his limbs as heretofore, and he succumbs to the overmastering fatigue.
Give the patient at once a cupful of oil of the Premadia- or Orchis- or Myrtle- olive, so that the stomach being lubricated may void the evil drug;

§ 90  or else you may readily milk the udder's swelling teat and give it him; but skim the oily surface from the draught. And you may infuse sprigs or leaves of the mallow in fresh sap and dose the sufferer with as much as he can take. Or again pound sesame seeds and administer them also in wine; or else heat and cleanse in water the ashes of vine twigs, and strain the lye through the interstices of a newly woven basket, for this will retain the sediment. Moreover if you rub down the hard stones of the persea in gleaming olive oil, they will ward off injury -

§ 100  the persea which once on a time Perseus, when his feet bore him from the land of Cepheus and he had cut off the teeming head of Medusa with his falchion, readily made to grow in the fields of Mycenae (it was a recent gift of Cepheus) on the spot where the scabbard-chape of his falchion fell, beneath the topmost summit of Melanthis, where a Nymph revealed to the son of Zeus the famed spring of Langeia. Or else you should break up in roasted barley the sap which congeals upon the frankincense bushes of Gerrha; also as helpful you should dissolve in warm water the tears from the walnut-tree or from the plum or those which ever drip in plenty on the elm-twigs,

§ 110  and drops of gum, so that he may vomit up part of the poison, and part render wholesome as he yields to the hot water when the sweat moistens his body. And again he might sate himself with a meal which he has taken or with strong wine and so escape an inglorious death.
When a liquid smells of the corn-eating blister-beetle, that is to say, like liquid pitch, refuse it, for on the nostrils it weighs like pitch and in the mouth like freshly eaten berries of the juniper. Sometimes in a weak infusion these creatures produce a biting sensation upon the lips,

§ 120  or again deep down about the mouth of the stomach; at other times the middle of the belly or the bladder is gnawed and seized with griping pains, while discomfort attacks men where the cartilage of the chest rests over the hollow of the stomach. And the victims are distressed in themselves: swooning delusions hold in bondage what is human in them, and the victim is brought down unexpectedly by pain, like the freshly scattered thistledown which roams the air and is fluttered by every breeze.
At times administer to the patient doses of pennyroyal mixed with river water, making a posset of them in a mug.

§ 130  This was the rich draught of the fasting Deo; once with this did Deo moisten her throat in the city of Hippothoōn [Eleusis] by reason of the unchecked speech of Thracian Iambe. At other times take from your pot and mix with the round seeds of flax a rich draught brewed from the head of a hog or of a lamb or from the horned head of a goat which you have but lately cut off, or even, maybe, from a goose, and give it until the man is sick; and let him by tickling his throat stir up in the gullet below the entire mass of polluted food still undigested. At times you should draw the fresh milk of a sheep in a clyster-pipe,

§ 140  administer a clyster and so empty the useless faeces from the bowel. At another time a draught of creamy milk will help the sufferer; or you should lop the green tendrils of the vine when they are fresh-burdened with leaves and chop them up in grape-syrup; or take from crumbling soil the ever sting-shaped roots of scorpius and steep in the bees' produce. The plant grows high like asphodel but sheds its stalks when withered. Also you should take four drachmas' weight of Parthenian earth which Phyllis brings forth under her mountain-spurs,

§ 150  the snow-white earth of the Imbrasus which a horned lamb first revealed to the Chesiad Nymphs beneath the rush-grown river-banks of snowcapped Cercetes. Or brew a drink of boiled-down must of twice that quantity, and into it shred some sprigs of rue, kneading the herbs with rose-oil, or sometimes soak it in iris-oil, which has often cured an illness.
If however a man thoughtlessly taste from loathsome cups a draught, deadly and hard to remedy, of coriander, the victims are struck with madness

§ 160  and utter wild and vulgar words like lunatics, and like crazy Bacchanals bawl shrill songs in frenzy of the mind unabashed. To such a case you should administer a cupful of hedanian wine, 'Pramnian', unmixed, just as it gushed from the vat. Or cast a cupful of salt into water and let it dissolve. Or else you should empty the fragile egg of a chicken and mix with it the sea-foam upon which the swift petrel feeds. It is with this that it sustains life, and also meets its doom, when the fishermen's destructive children assail with their tricks the swimming fowl; and it falls into the boys' hands as it chases the fresh and whitening surge of foam.

§ 170  Do you also draw from the bitter, violet-hued sea - the sea, which, with fire too, the Earth-Shaker has enslaved to the winds. For fire is vanquished by hostile blasts: the undying fire and the expanse of waters tremble before the north-west winds; though the unruly sea, swift to anger, lords it over ships and over the men who perish in it, while to the rule of the abhorred fire the forest is obedient. Again, common oil mingled with wine or a drink of grape-syrup mixed with snow will stay the pain,

§ 180  what time the reapers with their pruning-hooks lop the heavy, wrinkled vintage of the hedanian and the psithian vine and crush it, while with a humming sound bees and the tree-wasp, wasps and buzzers from the hills fall upon the grapes and feast their fill of sweetness, and the mischievous fox ravages the richer clusters.
Take note too of the noxious draught which is hemlock, for this drink assuredly looses disaster upon the head bringing the darkness of night: the eyes roll, and men roam the streets with tottering steps and crawling upon their hands;

§ 190  a terrible choking blocks the lower throat and the narrow passage of the windpipe; the extremities grow cold; and in the limbs the stout arteries are contracted; for a short while the victim draws breath like one swooning, and his spirit beholds Hades.
Give the patient his fill of oil or of unmixed wine until he vomit up the evil, painful poison; or prepare and insert a clyster; or else give him draughts of unmixed wine, or cut and bring him twigs of sweet bay or bay of Tempe

§ 200  (this was the first plant to crown the Delphian locks of Phoebus); or else pound some pepper with nettle seeds and administer them, or again infuse wine with the bitter juice of silphium. Sometimes you may offer him a measure of scented iris-oil and silphium shredded in with gleaming oil. Also give him a draught of honey-sweet grape-syrup, and a foaming vessel of milk which you have slightly warmed over the fire.
There are even means of promptly averting the oppression caused by deadly arrow-poison, when a man is overcome with anguish from drinking it. First, his tongue begins to thicken from the root

§ 210  and weighs upon the lips which are heavy and swollen about the mouth; he suffers from a dry expectoration, and his gums break open from the base. Often too his heart is smitten with palpitations, and it is his fate that all his wits are stunned and overthrown by the evil poison; and he makes bleating noises, babbling endlessly in his frenzy; often too in his distress he cries aloud even as one whose head, the body's master, has just been cut off with the sword; or as the acolyte with her tray of offerings, Rhea's priestess, appearing in the public highways on the ninth day of the month, raises a great shout with her voice, while the people tremble

§ 220  as they hearken to the horrible yelling of the votary of Ida. Even so the man in his frenzy of mind bellows and howls incoherently, and as he glances sidelong like a bull, he whets his white teeth and foams at the jaws.
You must even bind him fast with twisted ropes and make him drunk with wine, with gentle force filling him to satiety even against his will; then force his gnashing teeth apart in order that under your mastering hand he may vomit up the deadly stuff. Or divide up and boil till soft over a bright fire the young gosling of a free-feeding goose;

§ 230  you should also give him the wild fruit of the rough-barked apple-tree grown upon the hills after cutting off the inedible parts; or even those kinds that pertain to the fields, such as the spring seasons bring forth for girls to sport with; or again pear-quinces, or else the famed fruit of the grim Cydon, which Cretan torrents have fostered. Or sometimes, after sufficiently pounding all these with a mallet, you should soak them in water and then throw in some fresh and fragrant pennyroyal and stir in together with apple-pips. Also you may soak up some fragrant rose-oil or iris-oil into wool

§ 240  and let it drip into his parted lips. Yet hardly may a man after countless sufferings at the end of many days launch with safety his unsteady steps, while his startled gaze roams this way and that. This is the poison with which the nomads of Gerrha and they who plough their fields by the river Euphrates smear their brazen arrow-heads. And the wounds, quite past healing, blacken the flesh, for the stinging poison of the Hydra eats its way in, while the skin, turning putrid with the infection, breaks into open sores.
But if a man taste the loathsome fire of Colchian Medea,

§ 250  the notorious meadow-saffron, an incurable itching assails his lips all over as he moistens them, such as comes upon those whose skin is defiled with the snow-white juice of the fig-tree or by the stinging nettle or by the many-coated head of the squill, which fearfully inflames the flesh of children. But if he retain the poison, there settles in his gullet a pain which at first eats into it and presently lacerates it from below with desperate retching as he disgorges the poison from his throat; and at the same time the belly also voids the polluted scourings, even as a carver pours off the turbid water in which the meat was washed.

§ 260  Now sometimes you should cut and administer the crinkled leaves of the oak, or else those of the Valonia oak together with the acorns; or you should draw fresh milk in a pail and then let the man swallow his fill of the milk after retaining it in his mouth. At times to be sure shoots of knot-grass will help, or else the roots boiled in milk. You should also infuse vine-tendrils in water, or equally well shoots of bramble which you have chopped. Further, you should strip the green hulls of a well-grown chestnut-tree that cover the thin-skinned nut

§ 270  where the dry husk encloses the inner flesh of the nut so hard to peel which the land of Castanea brings forth. You may suitably extract the inmost pith of the giant fennel which received the spoils of Prometheus's thieving, and at the same time throw in a quantity of leaves of the evergreen tufted thyme and of the berries of the styptic myrtle; or you might perhaps soak the rind of the chamaeleon-thistle,

§ 280  which has a smell like that of basil . The furrow of the victim's tongue grows rough at the base and inflamed from below, and his heart wanders within him. In his frenzy he gnaws his tongue with his dog-teeth, for at times his madness overmasters his wits, while the stomach blinds with wanton obstruction the two channels of liquid and solid food, and rumbles with the wind it has penned within, which circulating in a confined track often seems like the thunder of stormy Olympus, or again like the wicked roaring of the sea

§ 290  as it booms beneath rocky cliffs. Distressed though he is, despite his efforts scarce can the wind escape upward; yet medicinal draughts can at once make him void egg-shaped stools, like the shell-less lumps which the free-feeding fowl, when brooding her warlike chicks, sometimes under stress of recent blows drops from her belly in their membranes; sometimes under stress of sickness she will cast out her ill-fated offspring upon the earth.
The familiar astringent draught of wormwood steeped in freshly pressed grape-syrup will check his pain;

§ 300  sometimes too you may cut up the resin of the terebinth-tree, or else the tears of the Corsican pine, or again of the Aleppo pine which makes moan on the spot where Phoebus stripped the skin from the limbs of Marsyas; and the tree, lamenting in the glens his far-famed fate, alone utters her passionate plaint unceasingly. Give him also plenty of the flowers of the bright hulwort, fatal to mice, or strip the low-growing shoots of rue, and spikenard, and take also the testicle of the beaver that dwells in the lake; or rub down an obol of silphium with a toothed scraper, or else cut off the same quantity of its gum.

§ 310  Sometimes too he may be given his fill of the wild goat's marjoram, or of milk just curdling in the pail after milking.
But if a man in his folly taste the fresh blood of a bull he falls heavily to the ground in distress, overmastered by pain, when, as it reaches the chest, the blood congeals easily, and, in the hollow of his stomach, clots; the passages are stopped, the breath is straitened within his clogged throat, while, often struggling in convulsions on the ground, he gasps bespattered with foam.
You should cut off for him some juicy wild figs,

§ 320  soak in vinegar, and then mingle the whole with water, stirring together the water and the astringent draught of vinegar; or drain away the burden of his surcharged belly. Also you should strain through a porous bag of fine linen some stirred curd either from a fawn of roe or red deer or from a kid; or again if you take some from the nimble hare you will bring healing and help to the sufferer. Or give him three obols' weight of well-powdered soda, and mix it in a sweet draught of wine; mix too a pound weight with equal parts of silphium and of its gum,

§ 330  and seed of cabbage soaked thoroughly in vinegar. And give him a sprig of flea-bane with its ill-coloured leaves. Or you should bruise some pepper and buds of the bramble-bush; then you will easily dissipate a mass of congealing blood, or break it up if it has lodged in the vessels.
Do not let the agonising drink of the hateful buprestis escape your knowledge; and you should recognise a man overcome by it. In truth, when bitten, its contact with the jaws seems that of soda; it has an evil smell; and all about the mouths of the stomach arise shifting pains;

§ 340  the urine is stopped and the lowest part of the bladder throbs, while the whole belly is inflated, as when a tympanitic dropsy settles in abundance about the mid navel, and all over the man's limbs the skin is visibly taut. This creature too, I fancy, causes swelling in plump-bellied heifers or calves, whenever they bite it as they graze. For this reason herdsmen name it buprestis.
Mix for the patient a draught of well-dried navel-figs from a flourishing tree in wine three years old; or you might also crush them together with a mallet,

§ 350  dissolve them over a fire, and give as an antidote to his sickness. And when he recovers his appetite give him again his fill of this honey-sweet drink, sometimes adding milk to the mixture; or else cast in and mix with wine the dry fruit of the date-palm or wild pears that have long been dried, or the fruit of the common pear, or of the cordate pear, or sometimes myrtle-berries; or let him even, like a new-born child, put his lips to the nipple, and calf-like draw a draught from the breast, even as a new-born calf fresh from the womb, butting the udder, forces out the quickening flow from the teat.

§ 360  Or else you may give him his fill of some warm and greasy drink and compel him to vomit unwilling though he be, forcing him with your fingers or with a feather; or cut and twist from papyrus a curved throat-tickler.
But if fresh milk turn cheesy in the hollow of a man's stomach, then, as it collects, suffocation overcomes him. Give him three draughts, one of vinegar between two of grape-syrup, and purge his costive bowels. Or further, grate into a draught the root of silphium from Libya, or else some of its gum, and administer it dissolved in vinegar.

§ 370  Or again, you may add to the mixture dispersive lye or a fresh-blooming sprig of Cretan thyme. Sometimes the clustered fruit of the eucnemus well-steeped in wine is a help. Also a drink of curd, they say, disperses the clots; so too the green leaves of mint mixed either with a draught of honey or with an astringent one of vinegar.
Consider now the thorn-apple, whose aspect and whose taste upon the lips are like milk. At once unwonted retchings agitate the throat of the drinker, and by reason of the pain at the mouth of his stomach

§ 380  he either vomits up his food stained with blood, or else he voids it, foul and fill of mucus, from his bowels, like one suffering from the spasms of dysentery. Sometimes worn out with the parching struggle his limbs give way and he falls to the ground, yet has no wish to moisten his dry mouth.
You must either administer draughts of milk, or else perhaps grape-syrup, slightly warmed and mixed with it in his cup. Moreover the flesh from the plump breast of a sleek fowl, softened on the fire and eaten, can be a help; so too is gruel if swallowed by the bowlful;

§ 390  also the creatures which beneath the roaring of the rocky sea ever feed about the weed-clad crags: some of these he should devour raw, others boiled, many of them after broiling over a fire; but dishes of sea-snails or of the purple limpet, of crayfish and pinna and of the brown sea-urchin will be far more helpful, and scallops; neither . . . the trumpet-shell or sea-squirts that revel in the seaweed.
Let not the hateful draught of pharicum escape your memory - for you are not ignorant of it: it causes grievous suffering in the jaws. Know that to the taste it is like spikenard; but it sends men reeling

§ 400  or sometimes out of their senses, and in a single day it can easily kill a strong man.
Now you may either weigh out and administer some of the purse-like root of the fair-flowering mountain nard which the headlands of Cilicia nourish by the brimming Cestrus, or else well-ground Cretan alexanders. Take also the iris itself and the head of the lily, abhorred of Aphrodite, seeing that it was her rival for colour; wherefore in the midst of its petals she attached a thing of shame to vex it, making to grow there the shocking yard of an ass.

§ 410  Or else you may shave his head, and having cut the hair from the roots with a keen-edged razor, take it, and after heating along with it fresh barley-meal and the dry leaves of rue, which in its feeding the caterpillar is quickest to spoil, soak in vinegar and plaster thickly about his temples.
Let no man in ignorance fill his belly with henbane, as men often do in error, or as children who, having lately put aside their swaddling-clothes and head-bindings, and their perilous crawling on all fours, and walking now upright with no anxious nurse at hand,

§ 420  chew its sprays of baleful flowers through witlessness, since they are just bringing to light the incisor teeth in their jaws, at which time itching assails their swollen gums.
Give the patient either pure milk to drink as a remedy or else fenugreek, which is grown for fodder and puts forth curving horns amid its windswept leaves - a great boon when it floats in common oil. Or else you should give him dried nettle seed, or even the raw leaves of the nettle itself in plenty to suck, or chicory and garden-cress and what they call perseum,

§ 430  and besides these, mustard and radishes in plenty, and mingled with them slender spring onions. A head of garlic with well-grown cloves just taken in a drink also averts disaster.
Learn further that when men drink the tears of the poppy, whose seeds are in a head, they fall fast asleep; for their extremities are chilled; their eyes do not open but are bound quite motionless by their eyelids. With the exhaustion an odorous sweat bathes all the body, turns the cheeks pale, and causes the lips to swell; the bonds of the jaw are relaxed,

§ 440  and through the throat the laboured breath passes faint and chill. And often either the livid nail or wrinkled nostril is a harbinger of death; sometimes too the sunken eyes.
Of all these symptoms you must not be afraid, but devote yourself entirely to succour, filling the failing man with boiling-hot wine and grape-syrup. Or else make haste to break in pieces the labour of the bee of Hymettus. (Bees were born from the carcase of a calf that had fallen dead in the glades, and there in some hollow oak they first, maybe, united to build their nest, and then, bethinking themselves of work,

§ 450  wrought round it in Demeter's honour their many-celled combs, as with their feet they gathered thyme and flowering heath.) There are times when, prizing open his dogteeth, or into his drooping jaws, you should squeeze with a tuft of fleecy wool some fresh, fragrant rose-oil or iris-oil or again oil of the sleek olive; and let him drain a thick flock saturated with it. And forthwith rouse him with slaps on either cheek, or else by shouting, or again by shaking him as he sleeps, in order that the swooning man may dispel the fatal drowsiness and may then vomit, ridding himself of the grievous affliction.

§ 460  And dip cloths first in wine and then in warm oil, and rub and chafe his chilled limbs with the liquid; or again, mix them in a bath-tub and dip his body in it, and at once immerse him in the hot bath and so thaw his blood and soften his taut, dry skin.
Also you should learn to know the dire and fateful drink of the deadly sea-hare, offspring of the waves of the pebbly sea. Its odour is that of fishes' scales and of the water in which they have been scoured; its taste is fishy like that of rotten fish, or of unwashed when scales taint the dish.

§ 470  A sordid creature with its slim tentacles, it resembles the new-born young of the calamary or of the octopus or the fugitive cuttlefish, which stains the sea black with its gall directly it perceives the fisherman's crafty assault. Over the limbs of the poisoned spreads the dusky pallor of jaundice, and piecemeal their flesh melts away and dwindles, and food is utterly loathsome. At times the surface of the flesh swells and grows puffy about the ankles; the eyes are swollen, and as it were luxuriant blossoms settle upon the cheeks. For there follows a scantier flow of urine, which is sometimes red,

§ 480  at others still more bloody in colour. Then the sight of every fish is hateful to his eyes and in his disgust he loathes food from the sea.
Give the patient a sufficient draught of Phocian hellebore or the gum of new-grown scammony in order that he may void both the draught and the filth of the evil fish; or else he should milk a she-ass and drink the milk, or he should dissolve smooth-skinned sprigs of the mallow in a pot. Then again he is given an obol's weight of cedar pitch; or else let him eat his fill of the scarlet fruit of the pomegranate, the Cretan kind,

§ 490  the wine-red, and the sort they call Promenean, also that from Aegina, and all those which partition hard, red grains into sections by a covering like a spider's web. Or else you should squeeze the flesh of grapes through a strainer, like olives oozing beneath the presses.
But if a man whose throat is constrained by parching thirst fall on his knees and draw water from a stream like a bull, parting with his hand the delicate, moss-like plants, then, approaching eagerly along with the water there rushes upon him in its desire for food the blood-loving leech,

§ 500  long flaccid and yearning for gore. Or when a man's eyes are shrouded beneath dark night, and without thinking he drinks from a pitcher, tipping it up and pressing his lips to its, the creature floating on the surface of the water passes down his throat. At the point to which first the stream drives and collects them, the leeches fasten on in numbers and suck the body's blood, settling now at the entrance where the breath always gathers to pour through the narrow pharynx, and sometimes one clings about the mouths of the stomach inflicting pain,

§ 510  and swallows a fresh repast.
You should administer to the patient a draught of vinegar mixed in his cup, and sometimes with it snow to eat, or ice fresh frozen by the north winds. Or you should dig up some moist, brackish soil and brew therewith a turbid potion to give him strength; or draw actual salt water, and either warm it at once beneath the late summer sun or heat it steadily over a fire. Or else you should give him rock salt in plenty or the salt flakes which a salter ever gathers

§ 520  as they settle at the bottom when he mingles water with water.
Let not the evil ferment of the soil injure a man; it will often swell up in his chest, at other times it will choke him, when it is fostered over the viper's coil deep in its lair, sucking up the monster's venom and the noxious breath from its mouth. This is the evil ferment which they call Fungi in general, for to different kinds different names have been assigned.
Now do you cut of either the head of a cabbage with its coats of leaves or the green fronds of rue, and administer them. Or else crumble the bloom of copper that has had long use,

§ 530  or ashes of the vine in vinegar. Sometimes grate the root of bindweed or some soda into an infusion of vinegar, or a leaf of the cress which grows in garden-plots; and citron too, and the biting mustard. You should also reduce to ashes in the fire the lees of wine or the droppings of the domestic fowl, and then let the man thrust his hand hard down his throat and vomit up the deadly poison.
But if hurt come from a draught, hard to cure, of the sorcerer's lizard, slippery-skinned and utterly reckless, which they call the salamander, and which not even a fierce flame can harm,

§ 540  then on a sudden the base of the tongue is inflamed and then the victims are overcome with chill, and a fearful trembling burdens and loosens their joints. They stagger and crawl upon all fours like an infant, for the faculties of the mind are utterly blunted, and livid weals spreading thick over the skin blotch the extremities as the poison is diffused.
Give the sufferer frequent doses of the tears stripped from the pine-tree mingled with the bee's rich produce; or boil down the leaves of the budding ground-pine together with the cones which the pine puts forth.

§ 550  And sometimes mix the nettle's seed with the finely ground meal of bitter vetch, and dry them. Sometimes too you should sprinkle cooked nettles with crumbling barley-groats, dress well in oil, and force the patient to eat in plenty even against his will. Again, pine-resin and the sacred produce of the bee and the root of all-heal and the delicate eggs of the tortoise are curative when you mix them on a hot fire; curative too the flesh of a hog abounding in fat when boiled down together with the limbs of the sea-turtle which swims at large with weak flippers; or else with those of the mountain tortoise that feeds on tree-medick, the creature

§ 560  that Hermes the gracious endowed with a voice though voiceless, for he separated the chequered shell from the flesh and extended two arms from its edges. Further, either you should bend to your service the tadpoles' impudent parents and eryngo roots with them, or you should throw into a pot a sufficient quantity of scammony and cook it. With these fee the sick man to satiety, and though he be near to death, you will save him.
If a man imbibe a draught from the sun-loving toad or from the dumb and green-hued toad which in the springtime cling to the bushes, sleek, and licking up the dew,

§ 570  one of them, the sun-lover, induces a pallor like fustic and causes swellings in the limbs while the breath issues continually in long gasps and forced, and smells foul at the mouth. Whereas the voiceless one that frequents the reeds sometimes diffuses the yellowness of boxwood over the limbs,

§ 580  and sometimes bedews the mouth with a flow of bile. Sometimes too a man suffers from heart-burn, and persistent hiccups convulse him. And it causes the seed, now of man now of woman, to drip on, and often scattering it over their limbs it renders it infertile. But you should give the patient the flesh of a frog boiled or roasted; sometimes pitch which you have mixed with sweet wine. And the spleen of the deadly toad averts the grievous oppression - the vocal toad of the fen, which cries on the sedge , the first harbinger of delightful spring. Further, for such patients you should sometimes pour out wine in abundance, cup after cup, and induce the man to vomit, reluctant though he be; or else heat over a fire a big-bellied vessel and keep the sick man always warm, and let him sweat profusely. Also you should clip and mix with wine the roots of tall-growing reeds which are nourished by the toads' native marsh,

§ 590  where as tiny creatures they swim about with their feet, or roots of the life loving galingale, female and male; and dry the man's body by ceaseless exercise, keeping him from all food and drink, and exhaust his limbs.
Also do not neglect litharge, which brings suffering when its hateful burden sinks into the stomach and wind circulates and rumbles about the mid navel, as in a violent colic which overpowers men, smiting them with sudden pains. The victim's flow of urine fails; then the limbs swell

§ 600  and the skin has the appearance of lead.
Give the patient either a double obol's weight of myrrh or a fresh infusion of sage, or else cut him hypericum from the hills, or sprigs of hyssop, or again a spray of the wild fig and seed of celery from the Isthmus, beneath which the sons of Sisyphus buried the youthful Melicertes, slain by the sea, and established games. Or else you should roast pepper along with rue and grate them into wine, and so rescue him from deadly sickness. You should also give him fresh buds of henna, or the firstling fruit of the pomegranate

§ 610  with the flower still upon it.
[See that you do not pluck the dangerous, pine-like yew of Oeta: it is the giver of lamentable death, and only a copious draught of unmixed wine can bring instant help when it chokes the pharynx and the narrow passage of a man's throat.]
[Some remedies medicinal for a man against noxious fungi Nicander in fact set down in his book, but in addition to these the myrtle whose twigs Dictynna abhors, and which Hera of the Imbrasus alone receives not for her garland,

§ 620  seeing that it adorned the Cyprian queen on mount Ida, when the goddesses were roused to compete in beauty with one another - from this in some watered glade take as a healing boon the scarlet fruit that waxes and is warmed with the wintry rays of the sun, and pounding them with a pestle strain the juice over fine linen or with a rush sieve and administer a cup containing a cyathus - or more, for a larger dose is serviceable since this draught is not harmful to men - for that is in fact sufficient cure if you drink it.]
And now hereafter you will treasure the memory of Nicander the singer,

§ 630  and observe the command of Zeus Xenios (protector of friendships).