CHAPTER XII. CURE OF ARTHRITIS AND ISCHIATIC DISEASES.
. . . . . . from food and radishes frequently. Then to have
recourse to the hellebore. The diet after these the same as
in the other affections, and after the diet, anointing with oil
and the cold sea-bath. These in an especial manner are the
common remedies in all arthritic diseases, for in gouty cases
hellebore is the great remedy, yet only in the first attacks of
the affection. But if it has subsisted for a long time already,
and also if it appear to have been transmitted from the patient's
forefathers, the disease sticks to him until death. But for the
paroxysms in the joints, we are to do this: let unscoured
wool from the sheep be applied; bathe with rose-oil and wine;
and in certain case sponging with oxycrate has done good.
Then as a cataplasm, bread with the cooling parts of gourd
and pompion, and simple cucumber, and the herb plantain
and rose leaves. And the
sideritis1 mitigates pain, along
with bread, also lichen, and the root of comfrey, and the herb
cinque-foil, and the species of horehound having narrow leaves:
of this the decoction makes a fomentation which allays pain,
and it forms a cataplasm with crumbs of bread or barley-meal.
And the part of citrons which is not fit for food, is excellent
with toasted barley-meal. Dried figs and almonds with some
of the flours. These form the
materiel for refrigeration; and,
indeed, this is sometimes beneficial to one, and sometimes to
another. In certain cases calefacients are beneficial, and the
same is sometimes useful to another. It is said that the following
application is powerfully anodyne; let a goat feed on
the herb iris, and when it is filled therewith, having waited
until the food it has taken be digested in the stomach, let the
goat be slaughtered, and bury the feet in fæces within the
belly. The medicines for the disease are innumerable; for
the calamity renders the patients themselves expert druggists.
But the medicines of the physicians will be described in works
devoted to these things.
