Got a cough that just won’t quit? Try some wolf’s hair in warm wine, a sort of lupwein, if you will. Unsightly dark spots on your face? How about smearing them with some ivory shavings mixed with honey. Got thin, wiry hair or afflicted with premature baldness? No problem: burn the genitalia of an ass, mix it in with some oil, pound it all together in a leaden mortar and smear that onto your freshly shaven scalp. You’ll find yourself with glorious locks in no time … or not.
You probably won’t be trying any of these remedies out, and probably shouldn’t, but if you lived in ancient Rome around the first century AD, you just might have had to if you wanted some relief. At least, that’s according to Pliny the Elder’s . This work takes you on a tour of the medicinal world of the Romans and beyond. To our eye, accustomed to the sanitized and scientific world of modern medicine, these are often
