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

ensured only if one is willing to “rub well silphium equal to one grain of vetch, together
with cardamom and mix it with wine or the milk of dog (kuno_j ga&lakti), and give it to
drink. This should deliver the fetus” (32.48-32.49) [121]. This short passage suggests
that that not only the fleshy part of a dog’s body was seen as holding curative powers, but
also its milk as well.
6. Non-Hyperthermic Patients
Affections, a treatise slightly later (c. 380 B.C.) than the Nature of Women, proves
traditional in terms of the type of dog meat it recommends as medicinal food. In a
passage which refers to patients, who have skipped or already gone through the stage of
high body temperature, boiled puppy meat is recommended as the suitable food:
If the patients do not have fever give the inner part of a loaf of white bread
crumbled into soup, or barley-cake and a slice of boiled fish, or meat of very
young lamb, fowl, or puppy, these boiled or beets or gourd or blites; after the
meal let them drink dilute fragrant old white wine. (Aff. 41.7-41.11) [108]
The passage again presents boiled puppy meat as curative food. Considering the above
discussion on the drying and warming effects of this food on the body, its prescription
here to non-hyperthermic patients makes perfect sense. In this way, the parallel with the
case of the erysipelas of the lungs, where the flesh of an adult dog was to be administered
only after the patients’ fever subsided, is clear.
213