A drench against the killing disease of pack-animals

For the destruction of pack-animals. A horse that has fallen sick is a hindrance to a soldier, and so is a pack-animal carrying arms in war, and a pack-mule carrying the necessaries. To all these such a treatment of both the other affections and the plague-affections must be brought.

Treatment of sick cattle. Three half-xestai of celery seed; and four-thirds as much linseed; of fenugreek, double the second; of ground vetch, quadruple the fenugreek: these by measure. Of allheal-root and of Illyrian iris and of savin of the Sabine grass, forty-eight drachmas each; and quadruple the three together, the weight of old unsalted axle-grease. Each of the dry things named is chopped separately and sieved, and is dusted with old wine and the fat; then, shaped into little cakes, it is dried in the shade. At need, as much as a royal walnut's size (which weighs seven grammata) is pounded with three kyathoi of honey, then dissolved in the oldest and most serious wine; let it be one xestes. Taking it in for three days of each year, the beast will not suffer the killing affection of cattle. For the sick, instead of the wine, it is dissolved in water, of those who introduced the equal before.

If need should arise to use bran also, even from the sick constitution, in the absence of the cakes, drench three rolls soaking them in wine, the way many insert axle-grease by itself. Those for whom wolves are hunted most easily heal the pack-animals of the affections named thus: cutting broad thin steaks of wolf-flesh, they dry them lean, hanging them over smoke, such as we do of cattle. At need one must boil some of these until it melts, and mixing with the water a half-xestes each of wine and of oil, drench each year. A head cut off from a dog already dead and rotten also loosens that terrible affection for the sick horse; smoked by the continuous exhalation of the smell, he will be healed.

A more various and more many-ingredient composition. The most many-ingredient, of which I myself had trial, which the leading Romans use, it is necessary to learn: as much as eight drachmas of cluster-amomum and of each pepper, black and white — lacuna the double; triple of leaf and of pyrethrum and of aristolochia, and of wormwood and of hyssop and of the dirty iris; and still of gentian the quadruple.