DBook III TREATMENT OF THE GERMS 197

got up, able to speak, and said: '*This has saved my life".  He
told me that he thought he had been stung by a spider whicb
had fallen on his neck. Hence we must conclude that these
and similar cures are due to some greater force than comes from
known qualities; and we may reasonably suppose that this
happens also in the case of malignant contagions that resemble
poisons; which contagions have their own peculiar antipathies.
Thus it is recorded of this same Armenian bole that in that
great plague which so afflicted Athens, very many, as we may
read, were saved by it. And they say that it was discovered
that scordium* has & marvellous power to preserve from putre—
faction, when corpses which had lain on it were found to have
escaped decomposition. Again, the corpses of royal persons
prove very clearly what great power to preserve from putre—
'faction there is in balsam, myrrh, aloe, cedar and the like.
Therefore no one ought to deny that this kind of antipathy
(antidotal power) exists with regard to contagions as well. I
shall say presently what remedies are endowed with this import—
ant faculty. Does this antipathy reside in the quality that
produces the smell, or in some other quality? No man can
decide with certainty.

"These then are the remedies that we may use to fight the
germs.