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serving to close the aperture of the shell when the animal is retracted. The operculum of some species of strombus emits a musky odor. In old works on materia medica it is said to have been known by the name of unguis odoratus, blatta Byzantina, and devil's claw. Arab women in Nubia and Upper Egypt scent themselves by making a fire of charcoal in a small but deep hole in the floor of the hut or tent. They throw on the charcoal ginger, cloves, myrrh, frankincense, cinnamon, sandal wood, onycha, and a kind of seaweed, and crouch over the hole enveloped in their mantles which fall from their necks like tents (EB 3512; cf. EB11 27, 984b, below).

The old pharmaceutical name of asafetida is devil's dung; so you can imagine the sweet smell of this remedy. The specific remedy for epilepsy is bromide of potassium, and bromine is derived from Bo@po, stench. In Germany an offensive animal oil, mixed with petroleum and dyed with alcanna, was extensively advertised as a patent medicine for epilepsy (BK 7, 567a, 1. 18). Pliny (32, 226) says that an epileptic seizure may be checked by the fumes of burning horns of goats or deer (morbum ipsum deprehendit caprini cornus vel cervina usti nidor). The verb deprehendere in this connection does not mean to detect, but to arrest, check. Horn, especially hartshorn, was formerly much used as a source of ammonia, and ammonia has a pungent and suffocating smell. Pliny calls epilepsy morbus comitialis: when a member of the forum was seized. with an epileptic fit, the assembly was broken up.

Hysterical patients often enjoy the most disagreeable odors. They may object to a sweet-smelling flower, but like, e.g., the odor of burned feathers. The oil of valerian smells like stale cheese. It is found not only in the root of valerian, but also in the secretion of sweating feet and in the liver of the dolphin. Delphinic, which is identical with isovaleric acid, also known as isopropylacetic acid, was discovered a hundred years ago by the great French chemist Michel Eugène Chevreul in his classical researches on animal fats. He was nearly 103 years old when he died in 1889. The fish caught by Tobias may have been a dolphin.. Several species of dolphins are found in large rivers, e.g., in the Amazon and the Ganges. Some are entirely fluviatile and never pass out to sea. Pliny (8, 91) says

that dolphins enter the Nile (delphini immeantes Nilo) and attack the crocodiles. He also states (32, 83) that some try out the livers of dolphins and use the oil for cutaneous affections (quidam delphini jecur in fictili torrent donec pinguitudo similis oleo fluat ac perungunt). The common name for dolphin is porpoise, which is a contraction of porcus and piscis, corresponding to the Ger. Schweinefisch. Porpoise-oil is used as a lubricant for watches. It is also called clock-oil. According to Pliny (32, 83), the ashes of dolphins were used for eruptions and leprosy. The common dolphin usually measures six to eight feet. It was formerly supposed to be a fish and therefore allowed to be eaten by Catholics when the use of flesh was prohibited.

If Tobias burnt on roots of asafetida, which is used as a condiment in the East, the liver and heart of a dolphin, which he had kept for several days, the smell may well have expelled the demon. At any rate, this remedy may have had a powerful effect on Sara. Karl Binz, who retired from the chair of pharmacology in the University of Bonn in 1908, has shown that the volatile oils of valerian act as sedatives of the motor cells in the anterior horns of grey matter of the spinal column. Recent experiments in the Pharmacological Laboratory of the Johns Hopkins University have shown that the Hebrew incense was distinctly disinfective, but not sedative (JAOS 41, 178). The fishy fume, which drove Asmodeus away, is alluded to in Milton's "Paradise Lost" (4, 168): when Satan approached Eden, gentle gales dispensed native perfumes, and those odorous sweets entertained the Fiend | Who came their bane, though with them better pleased | Than Asmodeus with the fishy fume | Of Tobit's son, and with a vengeance sent | From Media post to Egypt, there fast bound.

Tobias's fumigation was not undertaken for the purpose of dis

5 See David I. Macht and William M. Kunkel, "Concerning the antiseptic action of some aromatic fumes," in the Proceedings of the Society of Experimental Biology and Medicine, vol. 18, pp. 68-70 (1920). The burning of various forms of incense exerted a distinct antiseptic action, but the inhalation of incense in ordinary dilution produced no depression. On the other hand, valerian and asafetida odors had a distinctly sedative effect. The article by Dr. Macht and Dr. Ting on the effect of aromatic drugs on the behavior of rats will appear in vol. 18 of the Journal of Pharmacology.

infection, although the ancients were familiar with the sanitary efficacy of fumigation. After the slaughter of the suitors Ulysses fumigated the dining-hall with fire and sulphur (Od. 22, 481/2; EB11 14, 353). At marriages the Mohammedans of India burn benzoin with nîm-seeds to keep off the evil spirits. The nîm-tree is called also bead-tree, because its nuts are used for the beads of rosaries, especially in Spain and Portugal (EB11 14, 350b).

It may seem strange that asafetida should have been used for incense, but this gum-resin is relished as a condiment in Persia and India, and is in demand in France for culinary purposes. In northern Abyssinia it is chewed like a quid of tobacco in this country or betel-nuts in the East (BL 78). In the sixteenth century, valerian, which is now regarded as intolerable, was considered to be fragrant; the dried root was placed among clothes as a perfume. The fresh root has no distinctive smell, but on drying it, it acquires a powerful odor of valerianic acid. By the poorer classes in the north of England it was esteemed of such medicinal value that no broth, pottage (cf. Lat. lasaratum) or physical meat was considered of any value without it (EB11 27, 858). It was called setwall, a corruption of zedoary, French zédoaire, which is the Persian zedwar, zidwar. We object to the flavor of garlic, but in southern Europe it is a common ingredient in dishes and is largely consumed by the agricultural population. It was eaten also by the ancient Greek and Roman soldiers, sailors, and rural classes. The nard-plant, Nardostachys jatamansi, from the bases of which the famous perfumed unguent of the ancients, known as spikenard, was derived, is closely allied to valerian (BL 69, 14). Mountain nard, collected in Cilicia and Syria, is supposed to have consisted of the root of Valeriana tuberosa. The odor of Nardostachys jatamansi is intermediate between valerian and patchouli, although more agreeable than either (EB11 25, 668). Patchouli, which gives their peculiar odor to India ink and Indian shawls, is liked by some persons, while others detest it. In Cant. 2, 12 spikenard denotes the membrum virile (AJP 42, 165).

The gall of the fish caught by Tobias is said to have cured also his father's blindness or, rather, the white spots in his eyes, caused

by droppings of a bird, when he was asleep out of doors. The Greek text has leucomata, i.e., opacities of the cornea. Recent corneal opacities may clear spontaneously, especially in children, but all applications to dispel the opacity of old scars are useless. Tobit is said to have been 58 when the trouble began, and it had lasted for eight years before his son applied the preserved gall of the fish he had caught in the Tigris. Modern oculists tattoo the white spots with India ink, so that they are no longer seen against the black pupil of the colored iris. The gall applied by Tobias must have Ox-gall, i.e., the bitter fluid secreted by

been evaporated and dried. the liver of the ox, is used in water-color painting to make the colors spread more evenly; mixed with gum arabic, it thickens and fixes the colors. Black-lead or crayon drawings are set with a coating of ox-gall. If you add ox-gall to lamp-black in water you obtain a serviceable sepia. Tobias may have mixed with the gall the charcoal obtained by calcining the heart and liver of the fish (EB 455). The Egyptian ladies paint their eyelids with the soot of charred frankincense (EB 14, 350a).

Ebstein's remark in his book on Medicine in the Old Testament (Stuttgart, 1901) p. 164, that this use of gall, liver, and heart may be regarded as the first case of Brown-Sequard's organotherapy, is gratuitous. These organs were not administered internally by Tobias. Ebstein, who was Professor of Medicine in Göttingen, published also books on Medicine in the New Testament (1903) and the plague described by Thucydides (1899). He died in 1912. Brown-Sequard, who was for three years professor of physiology and neuropathology at Harvard, was the successor of Claude Bernard in the chair of experimental medicine at the Collège de France. In 1889 he advocated the hypodermic injection of a fluid, prepared from the testicles of sheep, as a means of prolonging human life. He was nearly 77 when he died in 1894. Organotherapy is much older than Brown-Sequard. For many years pepsin has been used for dyspepsia, and from time immemorial savages have been accustomed to eat the hearts of lions and other wild animals, under the belief that they will thereby obtain courage and strength like that of the animal from which the heart had been taken (EB11 26, 798).

PROC. AMER. PHIL. SOC., VOL. LX, G, DEC. 20, 1921.

Some think that the fish caught by Tobias was a callionymus or dragonet, because Pliny (32, 69) says that the gall of the callionymus heals scars and consumes superfluous flesh about the eyes (callionymi fel cicatrices sanat et carnes oculorum supervacuas consumit). He means, it may be supposed, a pterygium,τεpórov, i.e., a more or less triangular patch of hypertrophied conjunctiva and subconjunctival tissue with its apex at the edge of the cornea or upon the cornea. The gemmous dragonet or yellow gurnard (see cut CD 768) is a small fish which could not have swallowed Tobias. It is called gemmous because it is covered with spots like gems. Perhaps in allusion to its sparkling appearance it is called bridegroom in Banfshire in northeast Scotland, northwest of Aberdeen. Gurnard means grunter. The German name is Knurrhahn, i.e., grunting cock. The gurnard, when taken out of the water, makes a grunting sound. Callionymus, having a beautiful name, seems to be a euphemistic designation for dragon, just as the left side was called Evo, well-named, and the Erinyes, the Greek Furies, Eumenides, the gracious ones (JAOS 28, 116; BA 3, 557, 1. 31; ZDMG 65, 52).

Arabic authors say that the gall of the catfish was used in the preparation of an eye-salve, and that it was employed also for the expulsion of demons. The silurus is called cat-fish because, when taken out of the water, it emits a sound like the purring of a cat. The catfish in the Danube grows to ten feet with a weight of 400 lbs., so Tobias might have been under the impression that the fish would swallow him up. Pliny (9, 45) says that the silurus pulls down horses (equos innatantes demergit). The stories about children having been found in the stomachs of very large individuals are probably inventions. But Tobias would not have eaten catfish, because it has no scales. The Mosaic law forbade the Jews to eat scaleless fishes (Lev. 11, 12).

It is said that in the rivers of New Zealand eels attain an immense size and have been known to attack bathers, dragging them beneath the surface of the water. Some years ago a giant conger, caught in the shallow water off the shores of England, measured 8 feet 8 inches in length and weighed 148 lbs. (Baltimore American, June 28, 1921, p. 4, col. 8). EB11 9, 9 states that the largest conger recorded was 8 feet 3 inches long, and weighed 128 lbs.

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