Swallow-herb and nestling-stones for dim-sight

Of Africanus: for the eyes. The swallow carries the juice of a certain plant, from which, if it should drip onto the earth, another plant grows from the drop, named after the one that dropped it. And it comes up even if the nestlings, having partaken of it, defecate onto the earth. This is a marvelous and sharp drug against dim-sight; it also thins little by little the white films from wounds and restores the eye to the form of one that has not suffered.

The plant generated from it is milder, and succeeds less. Yet when rubbed it drives away those with glaucoma; and its powder with water, like the former, has done everything. For if anyone was lucky enough to take the first plant, he would have opened even blind eyes.

Two stones found in the bellies of the nestlings, split open with a sharp reed — for they are found in one of the two — white and black, a white dove having been sacrificed and invoked as Aphrodite, are put into a gold necklace and keep off all ophthalmia. But if you cut open the spring nestlings you will meet with stones in the belly, of which one is mottled and the other clean. So before they touch earth, bind them in the hide of a fawn or a calf against the great disease: perhaps you will heal it, but in any case you will lessen the epilepsy. For this one must cut them open at the beginning of the month and as it goes, taking the time as it admits.

They say also that a partridge's bile mixed with Attic honey is a healing of dim-sight and of cataract; which is also evident to many. And the eyes of the vulture, bound in a clean linen cloth and applied to the eyes each day, do not allow dim-sight, nor indeed do they allow cataract to settle. And its eye, fastened around in a dog's hide, does not allow ophthalmia. And its bile, smeared on with juice of horehound and Attic honey, takes away every dimming and mist of the eyes and does not allow beginning cataracts to form.

The eyes of a living frog, taken off and fastened around in a linen rag, worn on the left arm or the neck, keep the eyes unharmed; and if you fasten them on one who is in pain, you will loose the suffering. And one must release the frog whence it was taken. And its bile too is anointed on for sharp-sight and for cataract.

Nothing is greater than this for sharp-sight: having made ivy root into the form of collyria, throw them into a box of red bronze together with a little child's urine, and having bound it securely, bury it in horse dung for forty days.