Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

—:282 FISH IN MYTHS, SYMBOLS, DIET, MEDICINEDioscorides [Demat. med., ii. 20), the Scolopendra {ibid., ii. 16) ;or " the brains of the Torpedo apphed with alum on the sixteenth"day of the moon !Two more panaceas—needful and desirable now, as thenand I move to pastures new, or rather contiguous. The firsta mixture " of a live frog in a dog's food " will, on Salpe'sauthority, for ever deliver us from the yapping and barkingwhich so often makes night hideous.The second—naivest and quaintest (if I may employ withoutcruelty these over-driven adjectives) : " Democritusassures us that if the tongue be extracted from a live frog, withno part of the body adhering to it, and it is then applied—thefrog must first be placed in the water (!)—to a woman whileasleep, just at the spot where the heart isfelt to beat, she willof a certainty answer truthfully any question put to her !" 1If Hippocrates blamed his predecessors for their scantyuse of drugs, he would scarcely,unless suddenly clothed witha shirt of credulity, have approved of the plethora of prescriptionsand panaceas prevalent in later centuries. Trulyapplicable would then have been the inscription suggested fora pharmacy " ; Hie venditur galbanum, elaterium, opium, etomne quod in um desinit, nisi remedium." 2But credulity clogged such great minds as Hippocrates andGalen. Even they included astrology in the therapeutic art,and indict practitioners who only used that " science " despitefully,or eschewed it,as " men-killers."Quite apart, however, from the recognised prose treatisesby iatric writers such as Galen, Diphilus, and Xenocrates,there must have existed a very ample literature in Greekverse. One collection alone, Poetce Bucolici et Didactici (Didot,Paris, 1872), reveals under the heading of Carminum MediconimReliquice the names of some dozen authors who deal chieflyMarcellus Sidetes indeed exclusively—with the medicinalproperties of fish.1 Pliny, XXXII. i8. Belief in the efficacy of fish-nostrums continuesunto this day : in the Middle Ages it permeated all classes, and all Europe,e.g. Charles IX. of France would never, if he could help it, drink unless afragment of the tusk of the narwhal, or so-called sea-unicorn, were in the cupto counteract a possible poison.* Badham, op. cit., S3.