The Judgment of Animals in Classical Greece: Animal Sculpture and ...

4. Disease of the Liver
Adhering to the same rules is also the diet recommended for a disease of the liver.
As the author of Internal Affections states:
After the disease’s crisis, treat by giving fine cereals in small amounts; if the
patient eats bread, let him take it very hot, if barley-cake, let it be unpounded but
mixed a while before it is baked. As main dish, let him have boiled puppy
(skulaki/ou), pigeon or chicken, taking all these boiled, and of fish dogfish,
torpedo, sting-ray and small skates, also all boiled. (Int. 27.39-27.43) [113]
As was the case above, the boiled meat of a puppy (skulaki/ou) and cereals are again
prescribed as dietary treatment for a disease.
5. Gynecological Diseases
The consumption of boiled puppy flesh features also in the discussion of
gynecological diseases. In the treatise Sterile Women (end of fifth/ beginning of the
fourth century B.C.), 331 the author proposes as treatment for female sterility the
consumption of fat and well-boiled puppies (skula&kia) (217) [119]. The prescription is
identical to that for dropsy in the Internal Affections, with the exception of the flesh of an
adult dog being essential there. Further, another instance of the author’s discussion of
female sterility suggests that apart from puppy meat, equally helpful in fighting the
condition were considered its entrails (skula&kion e0ntosqi/dia) in fumigations (230)
[120].
Although not directly referring to canine flesh as curative food, an excerpt from
the treatise Nature of Women, which is of the same date as Sterile Women, 332 provides
additional evidence for the use of the dog as medicinal food. The author of the treatise,
which is a discussion regarding birth, advises that successful delivery of the fetus can be
331 Jouanna, Hippocrates 384, 386.
332 Jouanna, Hippocrates 385-386.
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