[split] The Strange Thing on 116v

[vosreth]

Hello dear friends,

I found an interesting passage from Hunain's Ten Treatises of the Eye (from 9th century) p. 121 [You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.]

Treatment for night-blindness (following Galen, ibid, l, IV, c. 8 (ed. Kühn, vol. XII p. 709-710) :
Bleeding at the forearm, purgation of the belly by means of medicine and clyster. Then the head must be cleared by gargling and sneezing and the veins in the inner corners of the eye must be bled, and he (the patient) must drink before a meal (water with) dry hyssop or rue. It (the eye) must be anointed with alum, rock-salt and the juice which flows from the goat's liver when it is roasted, and he (the patient) must admit to his eyes the steam rising from it during the roasting and then eat (the liver).

I am not entirely sure how a 15th century person would have collected these drops from a liver that's being roasted, but You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. features also a round shape with dots above it. The round shape might be the drops forming a pool, or then it might be the eye where the drops are being applied directly. Curiously, looking for oror sheey leads to f76v, where something like oror sheey can be found in the beginning of the line (as it appears also on f116v). This page features a nymph, holding a similarly shaped object, accompanied by similar dots and a circular shape. Might she be holding some kind of roasted goat organ that's dripping?

   

I can not find any mentions of goat milk unfortunately. However, at the end of the linked book, there's an excellent table with the english, greek and arabic names of different words related to treating the eye, and this list features goat's fat, goat's horn, goat's liver and goat's gall. Interestingly, Hunain also refers to the "tunics of the eye" with their greek names, for example arakhnoeidês khitôn for the arachnoïd, which presumably is where the droplets should be administered. 

Curiously, the word on the next line below oror sheey on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. looks like 8ox, but that might be a coincidence.