The ascent of Olympus / by Rendel Harris.

  • J. Rendel Harris
Date:
1917
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The ascent of Olympus / by Rendel Harris. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    106/188 page 84
    Moreover, there is another reason for explaining the concurrence of Apollo and the mouse in this Vvay. The mouse is not the only little animal that Apollo is interested in. Archaeologists will remember the famous statue of Apollo Sauroktonos, where the god is in the act of catching a lizard. Now we have no reason to suppose that there was a plague of lizards ; on the other hand, we do know that the lizard has a very important place in medicine. For instance, Pliny will tell us that to cure sores (XXX. 12) you must bind a green lizard on you, and change it every thirty days. If you are a woman use the heart of a lizard : (xxx. 23) the blood of a green lizard is a cure for the feet of men and cattle : (xxx. 49) a lizard killed in a particular way is an anti-aphrodisiac : (xxx. 24) its head, or blood, or ashes will remove warts: (XXVIII. 38) lizards are employed in many ways as a cure for the troubles of the eyes or (xxviII. 39) of the ears. From all of which we conclude that the lizard is very ancient medicine, and may very well have been in the Apolline pharma¬ copoeia. Now let us try a similar inquiry for Artemis. We will begin again with the Doddington Book, and extract some swallow-medicines. For instance, there is a recipe for making “ oyle of swallows ” by pounding them alive with various herbs. Then there is My Aunt Markam’s swallow-water, “ Take forty or fifty swallows when they are ready to fly, bruise them to pieces in a morter, feathers and all together : you should put them alive into the mortar. Add to them one ounce of castorum in pouder, put all these into a still with three pints of white wine vinegar ; distill it as any other water, there will be a pint of very good water, the other will be weaker : you may give two or three spoonfuls at a time with sugar. This is very good for the passion of the mother, for the passion of the Heart, for the falling-sickness, for sudden sound¬ ing fitts, for the dead Palsie, for Apoplexies, Lethargies, and any other distemper of the head, it comforteth the Braine, it is good for those that are distracted, and in great extremity of weakness, one of the best things that can be administered ; it’s very good for convulsions. ” There is another similar remedy to Aunt Markham’s in the book, which operates with “ two doosen of Live swallows ”. Evidently we have here the survival of a very ancient medicine ; its preparation is not a modern invention, except as regards the distil-
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