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CHAP. 79.—PROVOCATIVES OF SLEEP.

Cato was of opinion that hare's flesh,1 taken as a diet, is provocative of sleep. It is a vulgar notion, too, that this diet confers beauty for nine days on those who use it; a silly play2 upon words, no doubt, but a notion which has gained far too extensively not to have had some real foundation. According to the magicians, the gall of a she-goat, but only of one that has been sacrificed, applied to the eyes or placed beneath the pillow, has a narcotic effect. Too profuse perspiration is checked by rubbing the body with ashes of burnt goats' horns mixed with oil of myrtle.

1 Ajasson explains this by saying that the hare being eaten by the people of ancient Latium on festival days, with plenteous potations, they erroneously supposed the narcotic effects of the wine to be produced by the flesh of the hare.

2 The resemblance of "lepos," "grace," to "lepus," "a hare." See Martial, B. v. Ep. 29.

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