Book 5
27
For the bite of a chelydrus, allheal-juice or laser 4 grams, or leek-juice in 250 cc. of wine, may be taken, and a quantity of savory eaten. Over the bite either goat's dung, or barley-meal boiled with vinegar should be applied, or rue, or catnip pounded with salt, with honey added. This last is equally efficacious for the bite of a cerastes.
27
But when a venomous spider has done the harm, in addition to the surgical treatment, the patient should be plunged often into the hot bath; and take equal quantities of myrrh and bryony berries in 250 cc. of raisin wine; or radish seeds or darnel root in wine; bran boiled in vinegar is to be put on the wound, and the patient is kept in bed.
27
But the foregoing classes of reptiles belong to foreign countries, and are especially poisonous, and they are mostly generated in hot countries. Italy and colder countries are healthier in this respect too, for the reptiles they produce are less dangerous. Against them sufficient remedies are betony or convolvulus or centaury or agrimony or germander or burdock or sea parsnip; any one or two of these is pounded up and taken in wine . . . and applied to the bite. It must be remembered that all snake-bites are more harmful when either the reptile or the man is hungry. Hence snakes are most injurious when brooding, and it is of the greatest importance when there is danger from snakes not to go out before taking some food.
