Aëtius recommends nearly the same treatment. He also states, that when
the roughness of the tongue is difficult to remove, it may sometimes be
accomplished by rubbing it with the fat of fowls or with fresh butter.
(v, 118.)
Cælius Aurelianus directs the tongue to be cleaned with a sponge
squeezed out of hot water. Avicenna recommends for this purpose an
instrument called _chaizaran_, and also directs us to use sugar, or a
sponge with a small quantity of salt and rose oil. He likewise makes
mention of the salt brought from India, possessing the colour of salt and
the taste of honey. (iv, 1, 2, 22.) The Pseudo-Dioscorides recommends
mint triturated with honey, red sumach, and rose oil with honey, or by
itself. (Euporist. ii, 18.)
Prosper Alpinus held that the Indian salt, mentioned by our author and
Avicenna, was the same as our sugar. But this opinion was controverted by
Carolus Arantius, (Baptista Fieræ Cœna.) Sprengel, accordingly, maintains
that the Greeks and Romans were utterly unacquainted with our sugar.
(Rei Herb. Hist., and Notæ in Dioscoridem, ii, 104.) The mel arundinum
appears, in fact, to have been a natural concretion, and it was most
probably the same as the Indian salt. See Dr. Milward’s Letter to Sir
Hans Sloane. The cane from which the ancient sugar was procured is now
called by botanists the _bambusa arundinacea_, or bamboo cane. See Book
First, 96.