Book 5
27
There are also against certain other reptiles remedies which are well enough known. For the scorpion is itself the best remedy against itself. Some pound up a scorpion and swallow it in wine; some pound it up in the same way and put it upon the wound; some put it upon a brazier and fumigate the wound with it, putting a cloth all round to prevent the escape of the fumes, afterwards they bandage its ash upon the wound. The patient should also drink wine in which have been steeped the seeds, or at any rate the leaves, of the herba solaris, which the Greeks call heliotropion. It is good also to apply to the wound bran soaked in vinegar, or wild rue, or roasted salt with honey. I have known, however, practitioners who merely let blood from the arm of those stung by a scorpion, that and nothing more.
27
For the sting of a scorpion also, or for that of a spider, it is good to put on garlic mixed with rue and pounded up with oil.
27
But when cerastes, or dipsas, or haemorrhois has bitten a man, poley-germander roasted, equal in amount to an Egyptian bean, is divided into two draughts, a little rue being added. Trefoil also and wild mint and allheal-juice, with vinegar, are equally efficacious. Costmary, casia, and cinnamon may appropriately be taken in draughts.
