previous next

CHAP. 25.—REMEDIES FOR COLD SHIVERINGS.

A remedy for cold shiverings, according to Nicander, is a dead amphisbæna,1 or its skin only, attached to the body: in addition to which, he informs us that if one of these reptiles is attached to a tree that is being felled, the persons hewing it will never feel cold, and will fell it all the more easily. For so it is, that this is the only one among all the serpents that faces the cold, making its appearance the first of all, and even before the cuckoo's note is heard. There is another marvellous fact also mentioned, with reference to the cuckoo: if, upon the spot where a person hears this bird for the first time, he traces round the space occupied by his right foot and then digs up the earth, it will effectually prevent fleas from breeding, wherever it is thrown.

1 See B. viii. c. 35.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

load focus Latin (Karl Friedrich Theodor Mayhoff, 1906)
hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

hide References (4 total)
  • Cross-references to this page (1):
  • Cross-references in general dictionaries to this page (3):
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: