Medicine in ancient Rome mother's milk (or colostrum) is actually a rather effective treatment. Colostrum has been shown to prevent the growth of "Staphylococcus" bacteria, which are a known cause of several types of infection. Colostrum is about half as effective as some antibiotics prescribed to patients today. Colostrum is also effective against the bacterium chlamydia; this is the cause of a sexually transmitted disease and also can cause severe sight impairment, if not blindness. Thus, colostrum was a rather effective treatment in the ancient world – perhaps that is why it was viewed as a divine treatment. The interpretation of dreams was another
Bilinear form form on a normed vector space is elliptic, or coercive, if there is a constant such that for all , Given a ring "R" and a right "R"-module "M" and its dual module "M", a mapping is called a bilinear form if for all , , . The mapping is known as the "natural pairing", also called the "canonical bilinear form" on . A linear map induces the bilinear form , and a linear map induces the bilinear form . Conversely, a bilinear form induces the "R"-linear maps and . Here, "M" denotes the double dual of "M". Bilinear form