Conrad Gessner

Historiae animalium liber III qui est de Avium natura - 1555

De Gallina

transcribed by Fernando Civardi - translated by Elio Corti

442

 


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Cutis foeditatem mire aufert, (inquit Sylvius) ac cicatrices, praecipue in ambustis relictas. fere autem graviter olet: minus tamen postremum sublimando destillatum. Pilos auget Serapioni in Antidot.[1] aurium, dentium, sedis doloribus, et aliis plerisque sedis affectibus (utile) Rasi in Antidotario. Oleum ovorum Nicolai. Vitellos ovorum elixorum frige igni lento prunarum in patella ferrea, semper movendo rude ferrea, donec probe assentur, calidissimos linteo forti, oleo amygd. dulc. madefacto exprime. Satius est vitellos crudos frigere, cochleari assidue moveri, donec assati et cochleari pressi, vase inclinato reddant oleum: quod phiala conditum etiam diu integrum servatur. Ex viginti vitellis extrahes horis duabus unc. quatuor aut circiter, Haec Sylvius. In codice quidem Nicolai Myrepsi quem Leonardus Fuchsius nobis Latinum e Graeco reddidit, nullam olei de ovis descriptionem reperio. Oleum ovorum salubre et experimentis cognitum est adversus impetiginem aliosque morbos. admixto pauco sanguine gallinae curat scabiem cholericam. iniectum tepidum sedat statim vehementiam doloris in abscessibus aurium, et accelerat concoctionem eorum, aperitque ipsos: et facit nasci capillos. confert etiam adversus fistulas et ulcera melancholica. mitigat dolorem ambustorum et ardorem. cicatricem subtilem reddit, et dentium dolores anique eliminat, si illinatur cum pinguedine anseris. per diem curat aegrum vehementer affectum dolore hepatis propter flatus contracto. colorem corruptum restituit, praesertim in albedine oculorum, Arnoldus de Villano.

The oil gotten from eggs - removes in a marvelous way the ugliness of the skin (says Jacques Dubois) and the scars, above all those remaining in the burns. It has almost a heavy smell: nevertheless it is lesser when the distillate is made to evaporate for the last time. According to Serapion, in Antidotarium, it makes the hair to grow. According to Razi, in Antidotarium, it is useful in pains of teeth, ears, and in most other affections of the latter district. Oil of eggs of Nicolaus Myrepsus: Fry at low fire of live coals in an iron cup the yolks of hard-boiled eggs by going on in mixing with an iron palette knife until they are well roasted, when they are still very hot squeeze them by a strong linen cloth soaked with oil of sweet almonds. It is more than enough to fry the raw yolks, to often stir them with a spoon, until once roasted and squeezed with the spoon they release the oil by holding tilted the container: put in a vial of glass it keeps intact even for a long time. From twenty yolks in the turn of two hours you will get more or less four ounces of it [109.12 g], Jacques Dubois is writing all that. But in the codex of Nicolaus Myrepsus, which Leonhart Fuchs translated for me from Greek in Latin, I don't find any description of the oil obtainable from eggs. The oil of eggs, also through experimentations, is known for being effective against the impetigo and other affections. By mixing with it a little bit of hen's blood it makes to regress the itch due to cholestatic jaundice. Instilled lukewarm it promptly relieves the piercing pain in case of purulent medium otitis and hastens its maturation, and does it to drain: and it makes the hair to grow again. It is also effective against the fistulae and the ulcers caused by black bile. It mitigates the pain and the smarting of burns. It makes thin a scar and makes to disappear the pains of teeth and anus if smeared with fat of goose. In the turn of a day it makes to feel better a sick person suffering a lot because of pains at liver arisen because of intestinal meteorism. It makes to reappear a color that had changed, especially in case of leucoma, Arnaldus from Villanova.

Hoc oleum ipse hoc modo fieri observavi: Vitelli ovis ad duritiem elixis exempti, in sartagine assentur, vertendo subinde volvendoque paulatim cochleari, donec incipiant ita liquescere, ut iam chylum[2] aequabilem et pulti similem convertantur. manet autem materia adhuc flavi coloris. eam mox infundes in linteum, quod utrinque torquens ac circumvolvens oleum subflavum exprimes. Alii cum vitelli sic in patella assi ad chylum illum pervenerunt, amplius adhuc coquunt, donec materia tota siccari ac denigrari incipiat: quae paulo post iterum liquescet, et multum humorem nigrum et ex adustione graveolentem remittet. Tum cochleari materiam in sartagine crassiusculam comprimunt, ut oleum et humor omnis vase in alterum latus inclinato defluat et colligatur. Et hoc tanquam maiore desiccandi vi praeditum superiori praeferunt.

I myself have seen to prepare this oil in the following way: The yolks extracted from hard-boiled eggs have to be roasted in a frying pan often turning them and gently flipping them over with a spoon until that so doing they start to liquefy, up to change into a homogeneous mash and similar to a polenta. And the material goes on remaining of yellow color. Then you will pour it in a linen cloth and by twisting and turning it at both the extremities you will do the yellowish oil to go out. Others, when the roasted yolks in frying pan in the above-mentioned way reached that state of mash, they further cook them until the whole material starts to become dry and blackish: soon after it will become again liquid and will allow to drain quite a lot of black liquid and of heavy smell because of the scorch. Then with a spoon they compress in the frying pan the rather dense material so that the oil and the whole liquid flow out and this collects itself in the container inclined toward the opposite side. And they prefer this to the previous one since it would be endowed with a greater dehydrating power.

¶ Praesentaneum colicis remedium sic: Ova putidissima in Sole ponito ut persiccentur, cum aruerint conteres, et minutissime percribrabis, et ad praesidium in doliolo vitreo condes. cumque in aliquo auspicabitur coli dolor, in hemina aquae calidae dabis bibenda cochlearia tria, Marcellus. ¶ Si ovi albumen cum vitello ponatur in matula alicuius, quem veneno infectum esse suspicio fuerit, intra aliquot horas locus veneni in {hepate} <hepati> demonstrabitur. nam si id in venis fuerit ultra gibba<m> hepatis, aut in viis urinalibus, ovum nigrescet ac foetebit. Sin citra concava hepatis, ut in orobo[3] (colo, vel alterius intestini nomen legendum apparet,) ovum rugas et colorem citrinum contrahet, absque foetore. Hoc annotatum reperi in margine codicis cuiusdam Serapionis iuxta caput de urina, Obscurus. Ad exustionem: Ovorum assorum vitellos in sartagine combure, et in modum emplastri impone, Galenus Euporist. 3. 198.

¶ A remedy with immediate effect for those people suffering from colic is prepared in this way: Put in the sun very rotten eggs so that they dry completely, when they dried you will break them and pass through a sieve with very fine mesh and you will put them in a pot of glass in order to spare them. And when in a person the premonitory signs of a pain of the colon will appear, you will give to drink three spoons of them in a hemina [250 ml] of warm water, Marcellus Empiricus. ¶ If the egg white with the yolk is put in a  chamber-pot of someone for whom is existing the suspect that he has been poisoned, in the turn of some hours can be shown the location of the poison in the liver. In fact if the poison will be gone in the veins beyond the liver's convexity or in the urinary tracts, the egg will become black and will stink. If on the contrary it will stop within the concavity of the liver, as in the  broad bean (it is clear that we have to read colon or the name of another tract of the bowel) the egg will wrinkle and will take a lemon color without stench. I have found this annotated in the border of the chapter about urine in a codex of Serapion, an unknown author. Against a burn: Burn in frying pan the yolks of roasted eggs and apply them like poultice, Galen - Oribasius - Euporista III,198.

¶ Pars III. Remedia ex ovis sorbilibus. Ova sorbilia, in quibus liquidum (id est albumen) coactum adhuc densatumque non est, ad leniendas (laevigandas) gutturis (pharyngis) asperitates idonea sunt, Galenus in libro de alimentis boni et m. s. et alibi. In inflammationum arteriae principiis lenissima sunt (remedia), Idem in libro 7. de compos. sec. loc. Symeon Sethi scribit ova anserum proprietate quadam εὐφυΐαν, hoc est bonum ingenium facere, iis qui cum melle et butyro ea adsidue esitarint, sed verisimilius est, ova cum anserina tum non minus gallinacea sorbilia, sive per se, sive magis etiam cum melle ac butyro sumpta, non εὐφυΐαν, sed εὐφωνίαν, id est vocis bonitatem, repurgata laevigataque arteria, praestare. Ova sorbilia vocem clarificant, Elluchasem. Ovum sorbile miscetur iis quae contentos in thorace et pulmone humores incidunt, et usurpantur in illis quorum guttur exasperatum est clamore, vel acrimonia humoris. tenacitate enim sua partibus affectis inhaeret et immoratur cataplasmatis instar: et pariter substantiae suae lenitate omnis morsus experti easdem mitigat curatque. qua ratione asperitates etiam circa stomachum, ventrem, intestina et vesicam obortas curat, Galenus[4]. Prodest nimium calidis oesophago, stomacho, vesicae, Elluchasem.

¶ Section 3 - Remedies gotten from eggs á. la coque. The eggs à la coque, in which the liquid (that is the egg white) is not yet curdled and hardened, are proper for to soften (to smooth) the irritations of the throat (of the pharynx), Galen in the book De probis pravisque alimentorum sucis and in other treatises. They are (remedies) with very lenitive action in the initial stage of trachea's inflammations, still Galen in the book VII of De compositione medicamentorum secundum locos. Simeon Sethi writes that the eggs of goose because of some property give euphyían, that is a vivacious mind, in those people who will be assiduous in eating them with honey and butter, but it is more likely than the eggs à la coque both of goose and hen, drunk either alone, but still better if associated with honey and butter, are giving not an euphyían, but an euphønían, that is, a beautiful voice, once that the trachea has been polished up and made smooth. The eggs to be sipped make the voice clear, Elluchasem Elimithar. The egg to be sipped is mixed to those substances making the liquids contained in the chest and in the lung to disappear, and it is used in those people whose throat is irritated by the noisiness or by the sourness of the inflammatory liquid. In fact with its adhesiveness sticks to the involved zones and stays attached as if it were a cataplasm: which similarly with the softness of the material by which is composed, deprived of any irritating effect, softens them and makes them to recover. That's why it makes to recover also the burnings risen in stomach, belly, bowels and bladder, Galen. It benefits to an oesophagus, a stomach and a bladder excessively warm, Elluchasem Elimithar.

Acrochliaron[5], id est leviter calefactum sorptumque prodest vesicae rosionibus, renum exulcerationibus, gutturis {scabriciae} <scabritiae>, reiectionibus sanguinis, destillationibus, et thoracis rheumatismis, Dioscorides tanquam de albumine privatim: sed videntur de toto ovo sorbili recte eadem praedicari posse[6]. Utile est tussi, pleuritidi, phthisi, raucedini vocis a causa calida[7], dyspnoeae: et sputo sanguinis, idque in primis cum vitellus tepidus sorbetur, Avicenna. Sanguinem spuentibus salutare est ovum sorbile, Elluchasem. Ova semicocta commendantur ad tormina (dysenteriam) sine febre, Galenus de victus in morbis acutis comment. quarto. Semicocta stomachum roborant, et vires restaurant, ut alibi inter Notha Galeno adscripta legimus. Reperiuntur qui ex sorbili ovo ter quaterque excernant, Brasavolus. Ovorum trium aut quatuor candidum in aquae congio concussum bibat febriens. hoc valde frigefacit, et aegrum ad alvum exonerandam conturbat, Hippocrates libro 3. de morbis.

An egg acrochlíaron, that is, lukewarm and sipped, is good in case of bladder's burnings and of violent renal pains, of throat's irritation, of haemoptysis - to spit blood, of catarrh as well as of sputum of pulmonary origin, Dioscorides, as if specifically being the egg white: nevertheless advisedly it seems that the same effectiveness can be extolled about the whole egg to be drunk. It is useful in case of cough, pleurisy, tuberculosis, hoarse voice due to a warm agent, difficult breath: and in case of haemoptysis - to spit blood, and above all when the yolk is drunk lukewarm, Avicenna. The egg to be sipped is healthy for those people spitting blood Elluchasem. The coddled eggs are recommended against the intestinal pains (dysentery) without fever, Galen In Hippocratis de acutorum victu commentarii IV. Coddled, they strengthen the stomach and restore the energies, as I have read in a point among the spurious writings attributed to Galen. There are some people that because of an egg à la coque have three or four evacuations, Antonio Brasavola. Who has fever has to drink the egg white of three or four eggs beaten in a congius [3.27 l] of water. This refreshes quite a lot and stimulates the sick person to empty the bowel, Hippocrates in III book of De morbis.

¶ De ovis quae cum remediis efficacioribus miscentur, inferius etiam dicetur in genere, et particulatim: in praesentia vero de sorbilibus tantum quae aliis ammiscentur. In ovum sorbile mastiches [443] pulverem mittes, sed opus est ut mox coagitatum statim sorbeas, ne dilatione fiat crusta: quo exhausto facile {tussem} <tussim> sedabis, si id saepius feceris, Marcellus.

¶ More ahead it will be spoken both in general and in detail also about the eggs mixed with more effective remedies: but in this section only about those to be sipped mixed with other ingredients. You will put dust of resin of mastic in an egg à la coque, but it is necessary to drink it immediately as soon as it has been shaken, so that because of a delay a crust is not formed: after having drunk it you will easily calm the cough, if you will do this rather frequently, Marcellus Empiricus.


442


[1] 9 Novembre 2005 - Di Antidotarium nel web ne esistono a bizzeffe, ma nessuno attribuibile a Serapione, né Vecchio, né Giovane. Nell’opera curata da Gessner Nomenclator insignium scriptorum (1555) nel capitolo dedicato alla medicina a pagina 156 si riporta: Ioan. filii Serapionis Antidotarium. Practica & lib. de simplici medicina. § Attualmente il De simplici medicina viene attribuito a Serapione il Giovane e la Practica sive Breviarium medicinae a Serapione il Vecchio. Per cui non saprei proprio a chi attribuire l’Antidotarium citato da Gessner, vista la confusione che regnò in passato circa l’esatta identificazione degli autori di due distinti trattati: Practica sive Breviarium medicinae - De simplici medicina.

[2] I due sostantivi greci chylós e chymós sono sinonimi e significano succo, derivati ambedue dal verbo chéø, versare, spandere.

[3] La lezione corretta dovrebbe essere orbo, cioè l’intestino cieco. Questo giustifica l’annotazione fra parentesi.

[4] Citazione che ricorre in parte anche a pagina 441.

[5] L’aggettivo greco akrochlíaros significa caldo alla superficie, in Dioscoride significa tiepido.

[6] L’aggettivo greco akrochlíaros significa caldo alla superficie, in Dioscoride significa tiepido, come dimostra la traduzione di Jean Ruel del De materia medica (1549) II,55 Candidum ovi: summe tepidum prodest vesicae rosionibus [...]. § Stando alla suddivisione in capitoli dell’edizione di Jean Ruel si tratta in effetti dell’azione dell’albume. Invece Pierandrea Mattioli, pur adottando la traduzione di Ruel, congloba nel capitolo II,44 Ovum i capitoli di Ruel 54 Ovi natura e 55 Candidum ovi. Pertanto dal dipanarsi del testo di Dioscoride riferito da Mattioli potrebbe essere aleatorio riuscire a individuare quanto appartiene all’effetto dell’uovo nella sua totalità oppure al solo albume, ma solo se la lettura è assai frettolosa.

[7] Non riesco a immaginare una raucedine dovuta a qualcosa di caldo, salvo si tratti di una raucedine dovuta a una faringo-laringite provocata da una sorsata di liquido troppo caldo trangugiato inavvertitamente. § Altra ipotesi: una faringo-laringite scatenata da un cibo "caldo", ma non in senso termico: caldo in quanto metabolicamente scalda più degli altri, come le proteine, una quota delle quali viene trasformata in calore, e pertanto sconsigliate nella stagione estiva. Ma l'ipotesi della sorsata di liquido bollente mi sembra più verosimile, anche se alquanto rara come causa di raucedine.