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Book IV Sulphur, amber, Pliny's gems, jet, bitumen, naphtha, camphor, maltha, Samothracian gem, thracius stone, obsidianus stone

Book IV Sulphur, amber, Pliny's gems, jet, bitumen, naphtha, camphor, maltha, Samothracian gem, thracius stone, obsidianus stone Page of 251 Book IV Sulphur, amber, Pliny's gems, jet, bitumen, naphtha, camphor, maltha, Samothracian gem, thracius stone, obsidianus stone Text size:minus plus Restore normal size   Mail page  Print this page
BOOK IV
65
degree. The native mineral is less warm than the refined although it warms in time. Fire would not be able to implant so much heat within it when it is made in this manner if it were cold in the third degree as the Moors write, nor would it produce sleep if it were cold in the third degree as these Moors believe. Even though its odor prevents venery and having been drunk it prevents conception it does not follow that the mineral is cold. Rue, which is very warm, will do the same thing when drunk. Since cam­phor rises to the head, like all bitumen, it cures colds, produces sleep, and will turn the hair of a young man gray. Regarding all the other cures which are attributed to camphor these are, in most part, not due to the camphor but to the medicines with which it is mixed. However, since it is so tenu­ous, when added to other medicines it speeds their action. This is much too much concerning camphor.
Bitumen which flows from springs is often so dense that it has the ap­pearance of mud. However, as long as it floats on water it remains soft or flexible. When removed and dried it may become harder than pitch. Even though completely fluid after being kept for a long time in a vessel it usually hardens. Dense bitumen is found floating on the Dead Sea and on the stagnant water of the city of Samosata, Comagene. It flows from the Carpathian Mountains at Siebenburg, is found in Rhaetia near Sefeld and in Epirus near Polina. The latter material is called τηττά.σφα\το$ by the Greeks, a word derived from pitch and bitumen, not because it contains both of them, as Pliny writes (I do not know whose opinion he follows) but because it smells like each of them, as Dioscorides correctly states. The Moors call this material mumia. Serapio gives this name to both this material and the compound used in embalming the bodies of the dead.
There are springs of bitumen on the island of Zante and at many other places. I have described in De Natura eorum quae effluunt ex Terra the oc­currences, colors, tastes, odors and other qualities and uses of this mineral and will not repeat myself since nothing would be gained.
Liquid bitumen, having been drawn or collected, is heated in brass or iron boilers to thicken it. When it is finished it usually catches fire but the blaze is extinguished by linen cloths soaked in water and thrown over it. The Germans who live in Dacia and Saxony cook it in this way. I do not doubt that the Deximontanians who, as Pliny writes, live on the right bank of the Granicus river flowing through Susiana treat bitumen in this same fashion. Theopompus has written that the bitumen coming from the crater of Nymphaeum is mixed with some tasteless material and is the most dilute of all. Pliny writes that some pitch is mixed with bitumen and is recommended as a remedy for mange on animals and when young ani­mals have injured the mother's teats. The Saxons increase the viscosity of bitumen by mixing it with old animal fat just as others mix it with pitch. It is dug up in a dense or stiff condition on a hill in Apollonia according to both Theopompus and Posidonius. The former calls it mineral pitch and
Book IV Sulphur, amber, Pliny's gems, jet, bitumen, naphtha, camphor, maltha, Samothracian gem, thracius stone, obsidianus stone Page of 251 Book IV Sulphur, amber, Pliny's gems, jet, bitumen, naphtha, camphor, maltha, Samothracian gem, thracius stone, obsidianus stone
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