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CHAP. 29.—OXYMELI: SEVEN REMEDIES.

The following, as we learn from Dieuches, was the manner in which oxymeli1 was prepared by the ancients. In a cauldron they used to put ten minæ of honey, five heminæ of old vinegar, a pound and a quarter of sea-salt, and five sextarii of rain-water; the mixture was then boiled together till it had simmered some ten times, after which it was poured off, and put by for keeping. Asclepiades, however, condemned this preparation, and put an end to the use of it, though before his time it used to be given in fevers even. Still, however, it is generally admitted that it was useful for the cure of stings inflicted by the serpent known as the "seps,"2 and that it acted as an antidote to opium3 and mistletoe. It was usefully employed also, warm, as a gargle for quinsy and maladies of the ears, and for affections of the mouth and throat; for all these purposes, however, at the present day, oxalme is employed, the best kind of which is made with salt and fresh vinegar.

1 See B. xiv. c. 21. The modern oxymel, as Fée remarks, consists of honey dissolved in white vinegar, and bears no resemblance to the mon- strous composition here described, and which no stomach, he says, could possibly support.

2 See Lucan's Pharsalia, B. ix. ll. 723, 776.

3 Fée thinks that there may be some foundation for this statement, as vinegar acts efficaciously as a remedy to the effects of narcotic poisons. Mistletoe, as already stated, is not a poison.

The Natural History. Pliny the Elder. John Bostock, M.D., F.R.S. H.T. Riley, Esq., B.A. London. Taylor and Francis, Red Lion Court, Fleet Street. 1855.

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