Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

2MEDICAL POEMS—FISH APHRODISIACS 283Cursory skipping of these fragments compels, even if one'sacquaintance with ancient medical writers be slight, readyassent to the opinion of the learned editor (p. 74) that originalitywas not the dominant characteristic of their begetters. Theyare apparently, with two exceptions, but metrical plagiarismsor excerpts—not quite as bad as Tate and Brady's Translationsof the Psalms—from the works of Galen and others.The first exception, the medical oath {opuoq larpiKog)startles our modern conceptions. The practitioner swears thathe will administer none of the poisons, some of the deadliestof which, as we have seen, were piscine. *The second is a fragment from a medical work by MarcellusSidetes.In the days of Hadrian and Antoninus Pius, despitethe stirring times described by historians. Life (to alter thewell-known verse) must verily have been a watch and a vision—or rather a yawn—between a sleep and a sleep to many areader, for no less than forty-two volumes were necessary tocontain the hygienic hexameters of our author. But moreastonishing even than the leisure required for their perusal, thewhole forty-two (according to Suidas) were held in such highesteem that by command of the Emperors they were placed inall the public libraries of Rome.In our fragment, Remedies from Fish, Marcellus,after prefacingthat by long study he has acquainted himself with theirmedicinal effects, sets out a list of healing fish. He adds hereand there some leading specific. To one of these he prettilymakes us privy, e.g. the application of a burnt mullet, mixedwith honey, in cases of carbuncle.But our author must not be written down as a one-ideaedfish-quack ; for that Nature works cures (if not miracles) bythe agencies of earth, and of " broad-wayed air," as well as ofthe sea, is a firm tenet of his faith.* The influence of fish, wherever important, in commerce is noteworthy.They furnished, as we have seen, designs for a mint or cognomina for RomanNobles. An interesting and probably very ancient instance occurs in the oathtaken this very year (1920) by the Stipendiary Magistrate of Douglas, Isleof Man ": I swear to do justice between party and party, as indifferentlyas the herring's backbone doth lie in the midst of the fish."* Twv irdvTdiv I'fi/j.ar'^^x^' (pvffis ovSe ti vova'ui'(nytSafwv aAfyovffi ^porol xpaKr/xvi' (xovresf^ a\6s, «K yairji re kuI ijepos fvpvw6poio.u