Natural History — Book XXIV

Pliny the Younger & Pliny the Elder · a new plain-English translation from the Latin

1| Not even the woods and the rougher face of nature lack medicines, for that holy parent of all things has everywhere set out remedies for man, so that even the wilderness itself should become a medicine; and at every turn the marvels of her discord and concord come to meet us. The oak and the olive are divided by so stubborn a hatred that either, planted in the other's pit, dies; and the oak dies when planted next to the walnut, too. Deadly also are the hatreds between the cabbage and the vine; the vegetable itself, which puts the vine to flight,

2| withers when set against cyclaminus and origanum. They even report that trees already aged and due to be felled are harder to cut, and wither faster, if they are touched by the hand before the iron. They say that loads of fruit are felt at once by draught animals, and that unless the fruit is first shown to them they break out in a sweat on the spot, however little they carry. Ferula is a most welcome fodder to asses, but an instant poison to other draught animals; and for this reason that animal is assigned to Father Liber, to whom the ferula also belongs.

3| Even insensible things each have their own poisons, and the very smallest too. Cooks take excess salt out of food with philyra and fine flour; salt tempers the cloying taste of over-sweet things; nitrous or bitter waters are softened by adding polenta, so that they can be drunk within two hours, and for this reason polenta is put into wine strainers. Rhodian chalk and our own clay have a similar power. Things act by concord when pitch is taken off with oil, since both are of an oily nature. Oil alone mixes with lime, since both hate water. Gum is washed out more easily with vinegar, ink with water, and countless other things besides, which will be told continually in their places.

4| From this medicine was born. Nature had wished these alone to be our remedies: ready everywhere, easy to find and costing nothing, the very things we live on. Afterwards the frauds of men and the snares of their ingenuity invented those workshops in which each man is promised his own life for sale. At once compounds and inexplicable mixtures are trumpeted,

5| Arabia and India are prized for remedies, and a medicine for a small ulcer is charged to the Red Sea, while every poorest man dines every day on the true remedies. For if remedies were fetched from the garden, or a herb or shrub were sought, no art would be cheaper. So it surely is: through its greatness the Roman people has lost its ways, and by conquering we have been conquered. We obey foreigners, and through one art they have given orders even to our commanders. But of this more elsewhere.

6| We have spoken in their places of the lotos herb, and likewise of the Egyptian plant of the same name, and also of the Syrtic tree. This lotos, which our people call the Greek bean, stops the bowels with its berries. Shavings of the wood boiled in wine help dysentery, the menses, vertigo and epilepsy, and also stop the hair from falling. It is a marvel that nothing is more bitter than these shavings and nothing sweeter than the fruit. A medicament is also made from its sawdust, boiled in myrtle water, kneaded and divided into lozenges; it is most useful for dysentery at the weight of a victoriatus with 3 cyathi of water.

7| Acorns, pounded with salted axle-grease, heal the hardenings they call cacoethe. Those of the ilex are more powerful, and in all kinds the bark itself and the skin lying under the bark. This, boiled, helps coeliac patients. For dysentery the acorn itself is also applied. The same resists the bites of serpents, fluxes and suppurations. The leaves and acorns, or the bark, or their juice, boiled, help against poisons. The bark boiled in cow's milk is applied to a snakebite; it is also given in wine for dysentery. The ilex too has the same power.

8| The coccum of the ilex is applied in vinegar to fresh wounds and in water to fluxes of the eyes, and is dropped into eyes suffused with blood. There is moreover a kind of it, growing mostly in Africa and Asia, that very quickly changes into a little worm; for this reason they call it scolecium and reject it. We have described its principal kinds.

9| No fewer are the kinds of galls we have set out: solid and perforated, likewise white and black, larger and smaller. The power of all is similar; the best is the Commagenian. They remove growths on the body and help the gums, the uvula and ulceration of the mouth. Burned and quenched in wine [….]; they are applied for coeliac patients and dysentery; with honey, to whitlows and rough nails, pterygia, running ulcers, condylomata and the ulcers called phagedaenic. Boiled in wine, they are dropped into the ears and smeared on the eyes, and, with vinegar, used against eruptions and panus.

10| The kernel, chewed, relieves toothache, and likewise chafing and burns. Unripe galls drunk in vinegar reduce the spleen; the same, burned and quenched in salted vinegar, check the menses and, as a fomentation, prolapse of the womb. Every kind blackens the hair.

11| We have said that mistletoe from the robur is held the best, and how it is prepared. Some pound it and boil it in water until nothing floats; some chew the berries and spit out the skins. The best is that which is without skin and lightest, tawny outside and leek-green inside. Nothing is more glutinous. It softens, disperses swellings and dries up strumae; with resin and wax it soothes panus of every kind.

12| Some add galbanum as well, an equal weight of each, and in this way they use it for wounds too. It smooths rough nails if it is smeared on for seven days at a time and washed off with nitrum. Some think, from religious belief, that it works more effectively if gathered from the robur at the new moon without iron, provided it has not touched the earth; that it cures epilepsy, and helps women to conceive if they simply carry it about with them; and that ulcers are healed most effectively when it is chewed and applied.

13| The little balls of the robur oak, with bear's fat, fill bald patches with hair. The leaves, bark and acorn of the cerrus oak dry up gatherings and suppurations and check fluxes. A decoction of it, as a fomentation, strengthens numbed parts of the limbs; it is also good to sit in, for drying and contracting the parts. The root of the cerrus is hostile to scorpions. Bark of the cork oak, pounded and drunk in hot water, stops blood flowing from either part. Its ash in hot wine is greatly praised for those who spit blood.

14| Beech leaves are chewed for ailments of the gums and lips. Ash of the beech mast is smeared on for stones; likewise with honey for bald patches.

15| Cypress leaves, pounded, are applied to creeping ulcers, and to the head with pearl barley when it aches from the sun; likewise to hernia, for which reason they are also drunk. They are also smeared on with wax for swelling of the testicles, and with vinegar they blacken the hair. The same leaves pounded, kneaded with twice their quantity of soft bread in Aminean wine, ease pains of the feet and sinews. The little balls are drunk against the bites of serpents, or if blood is brought up; they are smeared on gatherings. Tender ones, pounded with axungia and bean meal, are also good for hernia; they are drunk for the same reason. With meal they are applied to the parotid gland and to scrofula.

16| The juice is pressed out when the leaves are pounded together with the seed. Mixed with oil, it removes dimness of the eyes; likewise, drunk in wine or smeared on, in the weight of a victoriatus, with a rich dried fig from which the seeds have been taken out, it cures ailments of the testicles; it disperses swellings, and with leaven, scrofula. The root pounded with the leaves and drunk is a remedy for the bladder and for strangury, and against phalangia. The shavings, drunk, bring on the periods and counter the stings of scorpions.

17| The great cedar, which they call cedrelate, yields a pitch called cedria, most useful for toothache; for it breaks the teeth and draws them out, and eases the pain. We have said how the juice of the cedar is made from it. Its use for books would be great, were it not that it brings pain to the head; it keeps dead bodies uncorrupted for ages, but corrupts living ones, a marvellous difference, since it takes away life from those who breathe and stands in place of life for the dead.

18| It also corrupts clothing and kills animals. For these reasons I would not think this remedy should be used for quinsies, nor, as some have urged, by tasting it for indigestion. I should also fear to rinse the teeth with it in vinegar when they ache, or to drop it into the ears for heaviness or for worms. It is a monstrous thing that they report, that it acts as an abortive in intercourse if the man's member has first been drenched with it. I should not hesitate to anoint with it for lice-disease, and likewise for scurf. They also advise drinking it in raisin wine against the poison of the sea hare. They would do better to smear it on in elephantiasis.

19| Certain authorities have also used it to anoint foul ulcers and the growths in them, and the white spots and dimness of the eyes, and have directed a cyathus of it to be sipped against ulcers of the lung, likewise against tapeworms. From it is also made an oil which they call pisselaeon, of more violent use for all the same purposes. It is certain that serpents are driven off by cedar sawdust, and likewise if people are anointed with the berries pounded with oil.

20| Cedrides, that is, the fruit of the cedar, cure cough, promote urine, check the bowels; they are useful for ruptures, convulsions, spasms, strangury, the womb, against aconite and sea hares, and for the same things as above, for gatherings and inflammations.

21| On galbanum we have spoken. Neither the moist nor the dry kind is approved, only such as we described. By itself it is drunk for old cough, for shortness of breath, ruptures and convulsions; it is applied to sufferers from sciatica, to pains of the side, to panus, boils, to a body drawing away from the bones, to scrofula, to knots of the joints, and to toothaches as well. It is also smeared on with honey for ulcers of the head. For suppurating ears it is poured in with rose oil or nard. By its smell it relieves epileptics, and when the womb is choking, or in failure of the stomach.

22| Applied as a pessary or by fumigation, it draws out aborted foetuses that will not come away, and likewise when smeared round a branch of hellebore and placed beneath. We have said that serpents are driven off by the reek of burning galbanum. They also flee from those anointed with it. It heals also those struck by a scorpion. It is drunk too in difficult labour, the size of a bean in a cyathus of wine, and it sets right wombs that have turned over; with myrrh and wine, however, it draws out dead offspring. It is hostile also to poisons, especially arrow poisons, with myrrh and wine. Mixed with oil and spondylium it kills serpents by touch. It is thought to be harmful to the urine.

23| Its nature is similar to that of ammoniacum, and so is its tear, to be approved as we said. It softens, warms, disperses, dissolves. In eye-salves it suits clearness of sight, and removes itching, scars and white spots of the eyes; it eases toothaches, more effectively if lit. Drunk, it benefits sufferers from difficult breathing, pleurisy, the lungs, the bladder, bloody urine, the spleen and sciatica (so too it loosens the bowels); for the joints and gout it is boiled with an equal weight of pitch or wax and rose oil. It ripens panus and draws out corns with honey; so too it softens hardnesses; for the spleen it is applied most effectively with vinegar and Cyprian wax or rose oil. To be anointed with it with vinegar and oil and a little natron is useful for weariness.

24| And the nature of storax among foreign trees we have set out. Besides what we have said, the kind that is preferred is the richest, clean, in whitish fragments. It treats cough, the throat, ailments of the chest, a womb that is closed or suffering from hardness; it brings on the periods drunk or applied as a pessary, and softens the bowels. I find that in a moderate draught it relieves sadness of mind, in a larger one it contracts it. Poured in, it mends ringing in the ears; smeared on, it treats scrofula and knots of the sinews. It is hostile to poisons that kill by cold, and therefore to hemlock.

25| Spondylium, shown together with the rest, is poured on the heads of the frenzied and the lethargic, likewise for long-standing headaches with old oil; it is drunk too in ailments of the liver, jaundice, epilepsy, orthopnoea, and choking of the womb, for which it also helps by fumigation. It loosens the bowels. With rue it is smeared on ulcers that creep.

26| The flower is effectively poured into suppurating ears, but the juice, when it is pressed out, must be kept covered, since flies and the like are wonderfully drawn to it. The root, scraped and put into fistulas, eats away their callus. It is also dropped into the ears with the juice. It is itself given too for jaundice and for disorders of the liver and the womb. It makes the hair curly when the head is anointed with it.

27| Sphagnos, or sphacos, or bryon, which also grows in Gaul, as we have indicated, is useful to women sitting over it for the womb, and likewise, mixed with nasturtium and pounded in salt water, for swellings of the knees and thighs. Drunk with wine and dry resin, it drives out urine most quickly. Pounded with wine and juniper berries and drunk, it empties dropsy patients. Terebinth leaves and root are applied to gatherings. A decoction of them strengthens the stomach. The seed is drunk in wine for headache and against difficulty of urination; it gently softens the belly and rouses desire.

28| Leaves of the pitch pine and the larch, pounded [….] and boiled in vinegar, for toothache. The ash of the barks is good for chafing and burns; drunk, it checks the bowels and moves urine, and by fumigation it sets the womb right. The leaves of the pitch pine are particularly useful for the liver, drunk in mead in the weight of a drachma. It is well established that those forests at least which are tapped for pitch and resin are most beneficial for consumptives and for those who do not regain their strength sufficiently after a long illness, and that the air of that sky does more good than a voyage to Egypt, more than drinking milk among the grassy summer pastures of the mountains.

29| Chamaepitys is called abiga in Latin on account of abortions, and by others the incense of the earth; it has branches a cubit long, and is like a pine in flower and in smell. A second kind is shorter and curved, [….] like it. A third has the same smell and therefore the same name, a very small plant with a stalk a finger long, rough, thin, white leaves, growing on rocks; all are herbs, but because of the kinship of the name they are not to be put off. They are good against the stings of scorpions, and likewise, applied to the liver with dates or quinces; for the kidneys and bladder, a decoction of them with barley meal.

30| For jaundice also and for difficulties of urine they are drunk boiled in water. The last is effective against serpents with honey; so too, as a pessary, it cleanses the womb. Drunk, it draws out clotted blood. It produces sweats when people are anointed with it, and is especially useful to the kidneys. From it too are made pills for dropsy patients, with fig, which draw the bowels. In the weight of a victoriatus in wine it ends pain of the loins and a recent cough. Boiled in vinegar and drunk, it is said to expel dead offspring at once.

31| With due honour pityusa will also be treated, for a similar reason; some count it in the genus of tithymalus. It is a shrub like the pitch pine, with a small purple flower. The root of its decoction, a hemina, or of the seed a spoonful in acorn-shaped suppositories, draws bile and phlegm off through the bowels. The leaves boiled in vinegar mend scurf of the skin, and the breasts too, mixed with a decoction of rue, and gripings and the bites of serpents, and in general gatherings in their beginning.

32| We have shown that resin is produced by the trees mentioned above, and its kinds and the countries it comes from, in the account of wine and afterwards in the account of trees. There are two chief kinds, dry and liquid. The dry comes from the pine and the pitch pine, the liquid from terebinth, larch, the mastic tree and cypress; for these also bear it in Asia and Syria.

33| Those are mistaken who think that from the pitch pine and from the larch is the same; for the pitch pine pours a rich resin, juicy in the manner of frankincense, while the larch pours a thin one of honey colour, smelling of a rank odour. Physicians seldom use the liquid, and then generally in an egg; that from the larch they use for cough and ulcers of the viscera (the pine resin is not much in use), the others only when boiled. And we have shown sufficiently the kinds of boiling.

34| Among the differences of the trees, the terebinth resin is preferred, being the most fragrant and the smoothest; of the countries, the Cyprian and the Syrian, both of the colour of Attic honey, but the Cyprian fleshier and thicker. In the dry kind they look for white, pure and translucent; in every kind they look for that from the mountains rather than from the plain, and likewise that from the north rather than from another wind. Resin is dissolved for use on wounds and in poultices with oil, in potions with bitter almonds.

35| Its nature in healing is to draw wounds together, to cleanse, and to disperse gatherings. Terebinth resin soothes ailments of the chest; the same, warm, is smeared on for pains of the limbs and for spasms (it is washed off in the sun), and over whole bodies, chiefly in the care of slave-dealers, to correct thinness, by loosening the skin in this way limb by limb, and making the bodies capable of taking more food.

36| The next place is held by that from the mastic tree. It has a power of contracting, and it moves urine before the others. The rest soften the belly, digest crude humours, quiet an old cough, and draw out burdens of the womb even when used as fumigation. They are especially hostile to mistletoe-birdlime; with bull's tallow and honey they heal panus and the like. Mastic resin turns back the eyelids most conveniently; it is most useful too for broken bones and for suppurating ears, and likewise for itching of the genitals. Pine resin is the best remedy for wounds of the head.

37| Pitch also, from what and in what ways it is made, we have indicated, and its two kinds, thick and liquid. Of the thick kinds the most useful for medicine is the Bruttian, since being the richest and the most resinous it affords the uses of both, and for that reason it is also redder than the others. As for what they add here, that it is better from a male tree, I do not think it can be understood.

38| The nature of pitch is to warm and to fill. It is particularly opposed to the bites of the cerastes, with pearl barley; likewise to quinsy, with honey; to catarrhs and sneezings, from phlegm. It is poured into the ears with rose oil, and smeared on with wax. It heals lichens, looses the bowels, and helps the coughing up of the chest, as an electuary or smeared with honey on the tonsils; so too it cleanses ulcers and fills them. With raisins and axungia it cleanses carbuncles and rotting ulcers; those that creep, with pine bark or sulphur.

39| Some have given it to consumptives by the measure of a cyathus, and against an old cough. It mends fissures of the seat and feet, and panus, and rough nails, hardnesses and turnings of the womb, and by its smell the lethargic. Boiled with the urine of a boy not yet adult and with barley meal, it brings scrofula to suppuration. For bald patches too they use dry pitch; for women's breasts, Bruttian pitch warmed gently in wine, with fine spelt flour, the cloths laid on as hot as possible.

40| Liquid pitch and the oil which they call pisselaeon, how it is made we have said. Some boil it a second time and call it palimpissa. With liquid pitch the inside of the throat is anointed for quinsy, and the uvula, [….] pains of the ears, clearness of the eyes, smearings round the mouth, shortness of breath, the womb, old cough and frequent spitting from the chest, spasms, tremors, opisthotonos, paralysis, pains of the sinews; it is the finest remedy for the mange of dogs and beasts of burden.

41| There is also pissasphaltos, pitch mixed naturally with bitumen in the territory of the Apolloniates (some mix it themselves); it is a special remedy for the mange of flocks, or if a newborn has injured the teats. The best natural kind is that from the substance which floats on top when it boils. Zopissa, we have said, is scraped from ships, wax steeped in sea salt. The best of this is from a ship's first voyage. It is added to poultices for dispersing gatherings. Torches [….] and boiled in vinegar are an effective rinse for toothaches.

42| Of the mastic tree, the seed, the bark and the tear all promote urine and check the bowels; a decoction of them, as a fomentation, is for ulcers that creep. It is smeared on moist sores and on erysipelas, and rinses the gums. The leaves are rubbed on the teeth when they ache; loose teeth are rinsed with the decoction; they dye the hair. The tear is good for ailments of the seat, when something needs drying or warming. A decoction [of the tear] is also useful to the stomach, moving belching and urine. It is also smeared on with pearl barley for headaches.

43| Tender leaves are smeared on inflamed eyes. Mastic, from the mastic tree, is used for turning back the eyelids and for stretching the skin of the face, and in cleansing preparations, and for those who bring up blood, for old cough, and for all that the power of acacia serves. It also heals chafed parts, either with oil made from its seed and mixed with wax, or with leaves boiled in oil, or with water the parts are so fomented. I know that the physician Democrates, in the illness of Considia, daughter of Marcus Servilius, a man of consular rank, who refused every austere treatment, for a long time used with success the milk of goats which he fed on mastic.

44| Plane trees are hostile to bats; their balls, drunk in wine in the weight of 4 denarii are effective against all the poisons of serpents and scorpions, and likewise against burns. Pounded with sharp vinegar, and better with squill vinegar, they stop all bleeding, and with honey added they mend freckles, cancers and old malanders.

45| The leaves and bark are smeared on gatherings and suppurations, and their decoction too for these; the bark in vinegar is a remedy for toothache, and the youngest leaves, boiled down in white wine, a remedy for the eyes. The down of the leaves is harmful to ears and eyes. The ash of the balls heals burns from fire or from cold. The bark, in wine, quenches the stings of scorpions.

46| What power the ash tree has against serpents we have indicated. Its leaves contain a seed, with which they treat the liver and pains of the sides, in wine, and draw out the water that rises under the skin. They lighten an obese body, bringing it gradually to leanness of its burden, when the same leaves are pounded with wine in proportion to the strength, so that for a boy 5 leaves are shared among 3 cyathi, for the sturdier 7 leaves in five cyathi of wine. It must not be omitted that some declare its shavings and sawdust are to be avoided. The root of the maple, bruised in wine, is applied most effectively to pains of the liver.

47| The use of white poplar clusters in unguents we have set out. The bark, drunk, helps sciatica and strangury, the hot juice of the leaves helps earache. Those who hold a poplar rod in the hand do not fear chafing. The black poplar is held most effective, the kind that grows in Crete; for epileptics the seed in vinegar is useful. It also yields a little resin, which they use for poultices. The leaves, boiled in vinegar, are applied to gouty sufferers. The sap that runs out of hollows in the black poplar takes away warts and pimples (it is fragrant when rubbed). Poplars also bear a drop on their leaves, from which bees make propolis. The drop too is effective for the things for which propolis is, with water.

48| Of the elm the leaves, bark and branches have the power of thickening and drawing wounds together. The inner layer of the bark, certainly, the tilia, soothes leprous eruptions, and so do the leaves smeared on with vinegar. The weight of a denarius of the bark, drunk in a hemina of cold water, purges the bowels and especially draws phlegm and waters. The tear is applied to gatherings and to wounds and burns, which it is good to foment with the decoction.

49| The moisture that forms in the little sacs of this tree gives the skin a gloss and makes the face more pleasing. The first stalks of the leaves, boiled in wine, cure swellings and draw them out through fistulas. The inner layers of the bark, the tiliae, do the same. Many think the bark, chewed, very useful for wounds, and the leaves, pounded and sprinkled with water, for swelling of the feet. The moisture too that flows from the pith of a lopped tree, as we have said, smeared on the head restores the hair and holds it when falling.

50| The linden is a gentler tree, useful for nearly the same purposes as the wild olive. Only the leaves are in use, both for the ulcers of infants and in the mouth, chewed and boiled. They promote urine; smeared on, they stop the periods; drunk, they draw off blood.

51| The elder has another kind, more of the woods, which the Greeks call chamaeacte and others helion, much shorter. A decoction of either, of the leaves or the seed or the root, in old wine, drunk at two cyathi, is bad for the stomach, but draws water off through the bowels. It also cools inflammation, above all fresh burns and dog bites, the softest leaves being smeared on with pearl barley. The juice, poured in, soothes gatherings in the brain and in particular the membrane that is around the brain.

52| Its berries are weaker than the rest; they dye the hair, and drunk by the measure of an acetabulum they move urine. The most tender leaves are eaten, dressed with oil and salt, to draw off phlegm and bile. For everything the smaller is the more effective. Two cyathi drunk of its root boiled in wine empty dropsy patients, and soften the womb; so too does a decoction of the leaves for women sitting over it. The tender stalks of the milder elder, cooked in dishes, loosen the bowels. The leaves, drunk in wine, also resist the stings of serpents.

53| The little stalks, smeared on with goat's tallow, are vigorously helpful to the gouty. The same are steeped in water, so that when it is sprinkled fleas are killed; if a place is sprinkled with a decoction of the leaves, flies are killed. Boa is the name of a disease of pimples, when the body reddens; it is whipped with an elder branch. The inner bark, pounded and drunk in white wine, loosens the bowels.

54| Juniper warms before all the rest, and thins; in other respects it is like the cedar. Of this too there are two kinds, one smaller. Either, set alight, drives off serpents. The seed is useful for pains of the stomach, chest and side. It disperses swellings and chills, and coughs; it digests hardnesses.

55| Smeared on, it checks swellings; likewise the berries drunk in dark wine check the bowels, and smeared on they check swellings of the belly. It is mixed also with antidotes and with oxypora. It promotes urine. It is smeared on the eyes in running. It is given for convulsions, ruptures, gripings, wombs and sciatica, drunk with white wine, four berries at a time, or 20 boiled in wine. There are those who also anoint the body with juice from its seed, for fear of serpents.

56| The fruit of the willow, before it ripens, turns into a spider, but if it is gathered earlier, it is good for those who bring up blood. The ash of the bark from the first branches, mixed with water, cures corns and callus. It mends blemishes of the skin on the face, the more when its own juice is added.

57| This juice is of three kinds: in one the tree itself sweats it out in the manner of gum; in another it flows at a cut, when the tree is in flower, the bark being cut away to the size of 3 fingers. It has power to clear what obstructs the eyes, likewise to thicken what needs it, and to promote urine and to draw out all gatherings within. The third juice drips from the lopping of branches by the pruning hook. Of these, then, one is warmed with rose oil in the shell of a pomegranate and poured into the ears, or the leaves, cooked and pounded with wax, are applied.

58| For the gouty, likewise, to foment the sinews with bark and leaves boiled in wine is most useful. The flower, pounded with the leaves, clears scurf from the face. Leaves ground up and drunk restrain unruly lust and, taken more often, remove the use of it altogether. The seed of the black Amerine willow with the foam of silver, in equal weight, smeared on after the bath, is a psilotrum.

59| The vitex is not much different from the willow in its use for withies, and in the look of its leaves, except that it has a more pleasing smell. The Greeks call it lygos, in other places agnos, because at the Thesmophoria of the Athenians the married women, keeping chastity, strew their couches with these leaves. There are two kinds of it: the larger rises into a tree in the manner of the willow, the smaller is branching, with whiter, downy leaves. The first puts out a white flower with a purple; it is also called the white, and the black is the one that has only the purple. They grow in marshy plains.

60| The seed, drunk, has a certain taste of wine, and is said to dissolve fevers and, when people are anointed with it mixed with oil, to cause sweat, as also to relieve weariness. They promote urine and the periods. They attack the head in the manner of wine (for the smell too is similar), but drive flatulence into the lower parts, check the bowels, and are exceedingly useful for dropsy and the spleen. They produce abundance of milk.

61| They are hostile to the poisons [of serpents], especially those which bring cold; the smaller is more effective against serpents: a drachma of the seed is drunk in wine or posca, or 2 of the most tender leaves. Both are also smeared on against the bites of spiders; or, applied only by anointing, or by fumigation or as a bed spread underneath, they drive off venomous creatures.

62| They restrain the impulse to sexual desire, and for that reason are especially hostile to phalangia, whose bite rouses the genitals. For headache from drunkenness, the flower and the tender little stalks with rose oil ease it. A decoction of the seed dissolves a more violent headache by fomentation, and cleanses the womb also by fumigation or as a pessary; with pennyroyal and honey drunk it cleanses the bowels. It softens abscesses and panus, though hard to digest, with barley meal.

63| The seed, with aphronitrum and vinegar, cures lichens and freckles, and ulcers of the mouth and of eruptions, with honey; for the testicles, with butter and vine leaves; for fissures of the seat, smeared on with water. For dislocations, with salt, natron and wax, the seed and the leaf are most useful. The seed is added to poultices for ailments of the sinews and for gout; it is dropped, boiled in oil, on the head in lethargy and frenzy. Those who hold a rod of it in the hand or in the girdle are said not to feel chafing.

64| The Greeks call erice a shrub not much different from the vitex, with the colour of rosemary and almost its leaf. They report that it is hostile to serpents.

65| The genista also serves for binding, and its flower is most welcome to bees. I doubt whether this is what the Greek authors have called sparton, since I have shown that fishing lines are commonly made of it among them, and whether Homer meant it when he said the ropes of the ships were loosed. It is certain that Spanish or African esparto was not yet in use, and that when ships were built sewn together, they were sewn with flax, never with esparto. Its seed, which the Greeks call by the same name, growing in pods in the manner of little beans, purges in the place of hellebore, drunk in a dose of a drachma and a half in 4 cyathi of mead, on an empty stomach.

66| The branches, and likewise the foliage, steeped in vinegar for several days and pounded, give a juice useful to sufferers from sciatica, drunk at one cyathus. Some prefer to steep them in seawater and inject it by means of a clyster. Sciatic patients are also anointed with the same juice, oil being added. Some use the seed too for strangury. Genista pounded with axungia heals aching knees.

67| Lenaeus calls myrice erica, like the brooms of Ameria; he says that cancers are healed by it, boiled in wine and pounded and smeared on with honey. Some think the tamarisk is the same, and that it is outstanding for the spleen, if its juice, pressed out, is drunk in wine; and they make its antipathy against this one organ so marvellous that, as they assert, if swine drink from troughs made of it, they are found without a spleen.

68| And for that reason they give food and drink to a man with a diseased spleen in vessels made of it. A weighty authority in medicine has declared that a rod broken from it, so that it touched neither earth nor iron, eases pains of the belly when laid on in such a way that it is pressed against the body by the tunic and girdle. The common people call it an unlucky tree, as we have said, since it bears nothing and is never sown.

69| Corinth, and the Greece around it, call it brya, and make two kinds of it, the wild one plainly barren, the other milder. This bears, in Egypt and Syria, abundantly a woody fruit, larger than a gall, rough to the taste, which physicians use in place of gall in the compositions they call antherae. The wood, moreover, and the flower and leaves and bark are used for the same purposes, though less strongly.

70| The bark, pounded, is given to those who bring up blood, and against the flows of women, and to those with coeliac trouble too; the same, bruised and applied, restrains all gatherings. From the leaves a juice is pressed for these same purposes and is boiled in wine; the leaves themselves, with honey added, are smeared on gangrene. A decoction of them drunk in wine [….] applied with rose oil and wax, they ease; so too they heal night-sores.

71| For toothache and for the ears their decoction is salutary. The root likewise for the same. The leaves, further, are applied with pearl barley to sores that creep. The seed in the weight of a drachma is drunk against phalangia and spiders, and with the fat of fattened fowls is applied to boils, and is effective also against the stings of serpents except those of asps.

72| Also for jaundice, lice-disease and nits, a decoction poured in is beneficial, and it checks excess in women. The ash of the tree serves for all the same things. They say that if it is mixed with the urine of a gelded ox, either in drink or in food, desire is ended. Charcoal of this kind, quenched in that urine, is stored in the shade; the same, when one wishes to kindle it, is restored. The Magi have reported that this is done also with the urine of a eunuch.

73| Nor is the sanguinea rod held luckier. Its inner bark opens scars that have already healed over. The leaves of sileris, smeared on the forehead, ease headaches. Its seed, ground in oil, checks lice-disease. Serpents also flee this shrub, and countrymen for that reason carry a staff made of it.

74| Ligustrum, if this is the same tree as the cypros of the East, has its own uses in Europe. The juice is a dispersant for the sinews, joints and chills; the leaves, everywhere, are good for an old ulcer, with a grain of salt, and for ulceration of the mouth; the berries against lice-disease, and the leaves likewise against chafing. The berries also cure the phlegm of poultry. The leaves of the alder, from boiling water, are a remedy for swelling.

75| Of ivy we have shown twenty kinds. The nature of all is doubtful in medicine. It disturbs the mind and, drunk rather freely, purges the head; inwardly it harms the sinews, and applied outwardly it benefits those same sinews. Like vinegar, all its kinds cool. They promote urine when drunk, ease headache, particularly useful for the brain and the membrane that holds the brain when soft leaves are laid on, pounded with vinegar and rose oil and boiled, rose oil being added afterwards; they are smeared on the forehead.

76| With their decoction the mouth is fomented and the head anointed. For the spleen they are good both drunk and smeared on. They are boiled against the shivering of fevers and eruptions of phlegm, or pounded in wine. The clusters too, drunk or smeared on, cure the spleen, and the liver when smeared on. As pessaries they draw the periods. The juice of ivy mends loathing of the nostrils and foul smell, especially that of the white cultivated kind.

77| The same, poured into the nostrils, purges the head, more effectively with natron added. It is poured also into suppurating or aching ears with oil. It gives comeliness to scars too. For the spleen the white kind is more effective, warmed with iron. It is enough to take 6 berries in 2 cyathi of wine. Berries of the same white ivy, three at a time, drunk in honeyed vinegar, drive out tapeworms, and in this treatment it is useful to lay them also on the belly. The ivy which we have called chrysocarpon, with 20 berries of golden colour pounded in a sextarius of wine, so that three cyathi are drunk, draws off by urine the water that has got under the skin; Erasistratus instilled 5 berries of the same, pounded in rose oil and warmed in the shell of a pomegranate, into the ear on the opposite side for toothache.

78| The berries which have the juice of saffron, taken beforehand in drink, make people safe from hangover; so too those of the black ivy, for people spitting blood or suffering from gripings. The clusters of the whiter kind, drunk, make even men barren. Whatever is boiled in wine is smeared on every kind of ulcer, even if they are malignant.

79| The tear of ivy is a psilotrum and removes lice-disease. The flower, of whatever kind, taken in a pinch of 3 fingers and drunk twice a day in austere wine, mends dysentery and quickness of the bowels. It is also usefully smeared on burns with wax. The clusters blacken the hair. The juice of the root drunk in vinegar is good against phalangia. I find also that splenic patients are cured by drinking from a vessel of this wood.

80| And they grind the berries, then burn them, and so smear them on burns that have first been washed with hot water. There are some who also cut the tree for the sake of the juice and use it for eaten-away teeth, and report that it breaks them, the neighbouring teeth being protected with wax so that they are not hurt. They look also for a gum on ivy, which in vinegar they promise to be most useful for teeth.

81| The Greeks, by a neighbouring word, call cisthon a shrub larger than thyme, with the leaves of basil. It has two kinds: in the male the flower is rose-coloured, in the female white. Both help dysentery and loosenesses of the belly, the flower taken in a pinch of three fingers in austere wine and drunk likewise twice a day; for old ulcers and burns, with wax; and by itself for ulcers of the mouth. Under these hypocisthis chiefly grows, which we shall treat among the herbs.

82| Cissos erythranos is the name the same people give to one like ivy, useful for the hips drunk in wine, likewise for the loins, so great is the power of its berries that it draws blood off through the urine. They call also chamaecissos an ivy that does not lift itself from the ground. This too, bruised in wine, by the measure of an acetabulum, cures the spleen; the leaves cure burns, with axungia. Milax also, which has the surname anthophoros, has a likeness to ivy, with thinner leaves. A garland made of it, with an odd number of leaves, they say cures headaches.

83| Some have spoken of two kinds of milax: one nearest to immortality, in shady valleys, climbing trees, with long-haired clusters of berries, helping most effectively against all venomous things by the juice of the berries: when this has often been instilled into infants, no poisons will afterwards harm them. The other kind loves cultivated ground and is produced there, of no effect. That, they say, is the earlier milax, whose wood, we have said, sounds in the ears.

84| Some have called clematis one like this, creeping through trees, jointed itself. Its leaves purge leprous eruptions; the seed loosens the bowels in the measure of an acetabulum in a hemina of water or of mead. A decoction of it is given for the same reason.

85| Of the reed we have shown 28 kinds, and nowhere is that power of nature which we are treating in these successive volumes more evident, since a reed's root, pounded and applied, draws out the stalk of the fern from the body, and likewise the root of the fern a reed. And, the more kinds we make, the one that grows in Judaea and Syria for the sake of scents and unguents moves urine, boiled with grass or the seed of celery;

86| it brings on the periods too when applied; it cures convulsions, drunk at 2 obols, and the liver, kidneys, dropsy, and cough even by fumigation, and the more with resin; for scurf and for running ulcers it is boiled with myrrh. Its juice is also taken up, and becomes like elaterium. In every reed the part nearest the root is most effective, and the joints more effective. The Cyprian reed, which is called donax, mends bald patches with the ash of its bark, and likewise rotting ulcers.

87| Its leaves are used to draw out thorns, and are effective also against erysipelas and all gatherings. The common reed has a drawing power even when fresh and pounded, not only in the root; in honey wine, they report, the reed itself does so. The root smeared on in vinegar cures dislocations and pains of the spine; the same, fresh, pounded and drunk in wine, rouses desire. The down of reeds, brought into the ears, dulls hearing.

88| Akin to the reed in Egypt is papyrus, of special use, when it has dried, for opening and drying fistulas, and, by swelling, for opening the way in for medicines. Paper, which is made from it, when burnt is among the caustics. Its ash drunk in wine brings sleep; the paper itself, applied with water, heals callus.

89| Ebony does not grow even in Egypt, as we have taught, and we are not treating in medicine foreign lands, but it will not be omitted on account of the marvel. They say its sawdust is uniquely a cure for the eyes, and that with wood ground on a whetstone dimness is dispersed with raisin wine; and with the root in water, white spots of the eyes; likewise cough, in the same way, with the root of dracunculus added, with honey. Physicians count ebony also among the eroding substances.

90| Rhododendros has not found even a Latin name among us; they call it rhododaphne or nerium. It is marvellous that its leaves are a poison to four-footed creatures, yet to man they are a protection against serpents, rue being added, drunk in wine. Cattle too and goats, it is said, die if they have drunk water in which these leaves have steeped.

91| Nor has rhus a Latin name, though it comes into use in several ways. For there is a wild herb, with the leaves of myrtle and short little stalks, which drives out tapeworms, and a shrub called the tanners' rhus, reddish, a cubit high, a finger thick, with whose dried leaves, as with pomegranate rind, hides are finished.

92| Physicians, however, use the rhoic for bruises, likewise for coeliac patients and for ulcers of the seat, or those they call phagedaenas; [….] pounded with honey and smeared on with vinegar. A decoction of them is poured into suppurating ears. A mouth-wash too is made from the branches, boiled, for the same purposes as that from mulberries, but more effective with alum added. The same is smeared on the swelling of dropsy patients.

93| Rhus which is called erythros is the seed of this shrub. It has the power of contracting and cooling. It is sprinkled instead of salt on dishes when the bowels are loose, and with silphium it makes all meats pleasanter. It cures running ulcers; with honey, roughness of the tongue, bruises, livid places, peeled skin; in the same way it brings wounds of the head to a scar most quickly. Taken as food, it checks excess in women.

94| A different thing is erythrodanum, which some call ereuthodanum, and we rubia, with which wools are dyed and skins finished. In medicine it moves urine, cures jaundice in honeyed water (and, smeared on in vinegar, lichens), and sciatica and paralysis, in such a way that those who drink it are bathed every day. The root and seed draw the periods, check the bowels, and disperse gatherings. Against serpents the branches with the leaves are applied. The leaves also stain the hair. I find in certain authors that jaundice is cured by this shrub, even if it is only looked at when tied on.

95| Different from it is what is called alysson, in its leaves only, and in having smaller branches. It received its name because, drunk in vinegar and tied on, it does not allow those bitten by a dog to feel the madness. It is marvellous, what is added, that matter dries up entirely at the sight of this shrub.

96| For dyers a small root too prepares wool, which we have said the Greeks call struthion. Both it and a decoction of it, drunk, cure jaundice, and likewise ailments of the chest. It moves urine, loosens the bowels. It cleanses the womb also, for which reason physicians call the pessary made from it the golden pesson. With honey it is splendidly good for cough, and for orthopnoea by the measure of a spoonful; with pearl barley and vinegar it removes leprous eruptions.

97| The same, with panax and the root of the caper, breaks stones and drives them out, and disperses panus, boiled with barley meal and wine. It is mixed also in poultices and eye-salves for the sake of clear sight, and is useful, among few things, as a sternutatory, for the spleen too and the liver. The same, drunk in the weight of one denarius in honeyed water, cures those with shortness of breath, and so pleurisy and all pains of the side.

98| The seed of apocynum in water (it is a shrub with the leaf of ivy, though softer, and with shorter little shoots, its seed pointed, split, downy, of heavy smell) kills dogs and all four-footed creatures when given in food.

99| Rosemary has been spoken of. There are two kinds of it: one barren, the other whose stalk and seed are resinous, which is called cachrys. Its leaves have the smell of frankincense. The root, green and applied, heals wounds, and prolapse of the seat, condylomata and haemorrhoids; the juice of both shrub and root cures jaundice and what needs to be cleansed away. It sharpens the keenness of the eyes.

100| The seed is given as a drink for old ailments of the chest, and for the womb, with wine and pepper; it helps the periods; it is smeared on the gouty with aera meal; it clears freckles also, and, smeared on where warming is needed or sweat is sought, it serves, and likewise for convulsions. Drunk in wine it increases milk, and so does the root. The herb itself is smeared on scrofula with vinegar; for cough it is good with honey.

101| Cachrys has many kinds, as we have said. But this one, which grows from the rosemary mentioned above, is resinous if rubbed. It is hostile to poisons and venomous creatures, except snakes. It moves sweat, disperses gripings, and produces abundance of milk.

102| The herb Sabina, called brathy by the Greeks, is of two kinds, one like tamarisk in leaf, the other like cypress; which is why some have called it the Cretan cypress. By many it is taken for fumigations in place of frankincense, and in medicines it is reported, in double weight, to have the same effects as cinnamon. It reduces gatherings and checks spreading ulcers, smeared on cleanses ulcers, and applied as a pessary or by fumigation draws out dead offspring. It is smeared on erysipelas and carbuncles with honey; drunk in wine it cures jaundice. They report that the phlegm of the fowl kind is cured by the smoke of this herb.

103| Like this herb Sabina is that called selago. It is gathered without iron, the right hand covered through the tunic, the left drawing it up as if by one stealing, the gatherer dressed in a white garment, with feet washed clean and bare, a sacrifice of bread and wine having been made before it is gathered; it is carried in a new napkin. The Druids of the Gauls handed down that it should be kept against every harm, and that its smoke is good against all ailments of the eyes.

104| The same named the herb samolus, which grows in damp places, and said that this too is gathered with the left hand by people fasting, against diseases of swine and cattle; that the gatherer must not look back, nor lay it down anywhere but in the water-trough, and there crush it for those about to drink.

105| The kinds of gum we have described. In these the better each is, the greater its effects will be. They are bad for the teeth; they coagulate blood and so benefit those who bring up blood, and likewise burns; they are bad for ailments of the windpipe, they move urine, they blunt bitterness. Among the other astringents, the one from the bitter almond is more effective for thickening the viscera and has warming powers.

106| Those of plums, and of cherries, and of vines are also put forward. Smeared on, they dry and contract, and with vinegar they cure the lichens of infants; they are good too for old cough, drunk at 4 obols in a mixture. They are believed also to give a pleasanter colour and an appetite for food, and to benefit sufferers from stone, drunk with raisin wine. They are best suited to uses for the eyes and wounds.

107| The Arabian thorn (we have spoken of the praises of the Egyptian thorn in the place on perfumes) also contracts and thickens all catarrhs, spittings of blood, and excess of the periods, and is stronger still in its root.

108| The seed of the white thorn gives help against scorpions. A garland of it laid on the head lessens headaches. Like this is the one the Greeks call acanthion, with much smaller leaves, prickly at the extremities and covered with a spider-web down, which, when gathered, makes in the East even certain garments like silken ones. The leaves themselves or the roots are drunk as remedies for opisthotonos.

109| Acacia also is made from a thorn in Egypt, from a tree both white and black, and likewise a green, but far better than the first. It is made too in Galatia, the worst, from a more thorny tree. The seed of all is like a lentil, only smaller both in grain and in pod. It is gathered in autumn; before it is gathered it contracts far more strongly. The juice from the pods, drenched with rain water, then pounded in a mortar, is pressed out by machines, and then thickened in the sun in mortars into lozenges. A less effective kind is made from the leaves. For finishing hides they use the seed instead of gall.

110| The juice of the leaves, and that of the Galatian acacia if very black, is disapproved, likewise that which is very red. The purple or whitish one, and the kind that dissolves most easily (its power for contracting and cooling is greatest), is useful before all others in medicines for the eyes. The lozenges are washed for these uses, by some roasted, by others thoroughly burnt. They dye the hair; they cure erysipelas, ulcers that creep and moist ailments of the body, gatherings, bruised joints, chilblains and pterygia. They check excess of the periods in women, and prolapse of the womb and seat, likewise of the eyes, and ulcers of the mouth and genitals.

111| This common thorn also, with which fullers' cauldrons are filled, has a use of its root. Throughout the Spains, indeed, many use that one both among perfumes and for unguents, calling it aspalathus. There is without doubt under this name a wild thorn in the East, as we have said, white, of the size of a proper tree,

112| but also a lower shrub, equally thorny, on Nisyros and in the islands of the Rhodians, which some call erysisceptrum, some phasganon, the Syrians diaxylon. The best is that which is least ferula-like, reddish, or verging on purple once the bark is stripped off.

113| It grows in several places, but is not fragrant everywhere. What power it had, when the rainbow rested upon it, we have said. It heals foul ulcers of the mouth and ozaena, ulcerated or carbuncular genitals, likewise fissures; drunk, it disperses flatulence and strangury. The bark cures those who pass blood. A decoction of it checks the bowels. The wild kind also is thought to do similar things.

114| There is also a thorn called appendix, since the berries of crimson colour on it are called appendices. These, raw by themselves and dried, boiled in wine, check looseness of the bowels and gripings. The berries of pyracantha are drunk against the stings of serpents.

115| Paliurus also is a kind of thorn. Its seed the Africans call zura, most effective against scorpions, likewise for sufferers from stone and for cough. The leaves have a contracting power. The root disperses panus, gatherings and abscesses; drunk, it draws urine. A decoction of it in wine checks the bowels, and is hostile to serpents. The root especially is given in wine.

116| Leaves of aquifolia, bruised with salt added, are good for diseases of the joints; the berries for the purging of women, for coeliac patients, dysentery and cholera. Drunk in wine they check the bowels. The root, boiled and smeared on, draws out what is fixed in the body, and is most useful for dislocations and swellings. The aquifolia tree planted in a house or farm keeps off poisonings. Pythagoras reports that water freezes with its flower; likewise that a staff made from it, thrown at any animal, even if it falls short through a failing of the thrower, glides of itself a cubit nearer; so remarkable a nature is in the tree. The smoke of the taxus tree kills mice.

117| Nor did nature beget brambles only for harm, and therefore gave them also berries, that is, food even for men. They have the power of drying and contracting, and are most suitable for the gums, tonsils and genitals. They are hostile to the most villainous of serpents, to haemorrhoid and to prester, the flower or the berries to scorpions. They join wounds without danger of gatherings. They move urine.

118| Their tender stalks are pounded and the juice pressed out, then thickened in the sun to the thickness of honey; it is understood to be a singular remedy, drunk or smeared on, against ills of the mouth and eyes, those who spit blood, quinsies, the womb, the seat, and coeliac patients. For ailments of the mouth the leaves also, chewed, are good, and they are smeared on running ulcers, or on any on the head. For sufferers at the heart they are laid on, so or by themselves, at the left breast, likewise on the stomach in pains and on eyes that protrude.

119| Their juice is also dropped into the ears. It cures condylomata with rose-oil cerate. A decoction of the little stalks in wine is a ready remedy for the uvula. The same, taken by themselves as food in the manner of a sprout, or boiled in austere wine, steady loose teeth. They check the bowels and flows of blood; they are good for dysentery. They are dried in the shade, so that the ash of those burnt checks the uvula. The leaves too, dried and bruised, are reported useful for ulcers of beasts of burden.

120| The berries which grow on these brambles furnish a mouth-wash even more effective than the cultivated mulberry. In the same composition, or merely with hypocisthis and honey, they are drunk in cholera and by sufferers at the heart and against spiders. Among the medicines they call styptics there is nothing more effective than the root of the berry-bearing bramble boiled in wine down to a third, so that ulcers of the mouth are rinsed with it and the seat fomented, a power so great that sponges themselves turn to stone.

121| The other kind of bramble, on which the rose grows, produces a ball like a chestnut, a special remedy for sufferers from stone (the cynorrhoda is another thing, which we shall speak of in the next volume); they call it cynosbaton, others cynapanxis, others neurospaston. It has a leaf like a man's footprint. It bears also a black cluster, in whose berry it has a sinew, whence the whole is called neurospastos, another thing from the caper, which physicians have called cynosbaton. Its thyrsus, preserved in vinegar, is eaten as a remedy for the spleen and for flatulence. Its sinew chewed with Chian mastic cleanses the mouth.

122| The rose of brambles mends bald patches with axungia. The berries dye the hair with omphacine oil. The flower of the bramble is gathered at harvest; the white, drunk in wine, is outstanding for pleurisy, and for coeliac patients. The root boiled down to a third checks the bowels and bleeding, and teeth rinsed with the decoction. With the same liquid ulcers of the seat and genitals are fomented. Ash from the root checks the uvula.

123| The Idaean bramble is so called because on Ida no other grows. It is more tender and smaller, with sparser and harmless stalks, growing in the shade of trees. Its flower is smeared with honey on running of the eyes and on erysipelas, and is given to sufferers of the stomach to be drunk in water. For the rest it does the same things as were said above.

124| Among the kinds of bramble is what the Greeks call rhamnos, whiter, more shrubby, spreading branches with straight prickles, not hooked as in the others, with larger leaves. A second kind of it is wild, blacker and somewhat reddish; it bears as it were little pods. From its root, boiled in water, a medicine is made which is called Lycium. The seed draws away the afterbirth. The other, the whiter, contracts more, cools, and is better suited to gatherings and wounds. The leaves of each, raw and boiled, are smeared on with oil.

125| They report that Lycium is made better from a thorn, which they also call Chiron's pyxacanthus, of the sort we described among the trees of India, since the Indian is judged by far the best. The pounded branches and roots, of the greatest bitterness, are boiled in a bronze vessel for three days, and the wood taken out a second time, until the thickness of honey results. It is adulterated with bitter juices, with amurca too, and with ox gall. Its froth and a certain flower of it is added to medicines for the eyes.

126| With the remaining juice it clears the face and cures itch-sores, eaten-away corners of the eyes and old running of the eyes, suppurating ears, tonsils, gums, cough, spitting of blood, swallowed to the size of a bean or, if it flows from wounds, smeared on; fissures, ulcers of the genitals, chafings, fresh ulcers and creeping and rotting ones, corns in the nostrils, suppurations. It is drunk also by women in milk against flows.

127| The Indian is distinguished by lumps black outside, red within, which when you break them quickly blacken. It contracts vehemently, with bitterness. It is useful for all the same things, but especially for the genitals.

128| There are those who say also that sarcocolla is the tear of a thorn, like the fine meal of frankincense, sweet with a certain sharpness, gummy. It checks fluxes, and is smeared chiefly on infants. With age this also turns black; it is better the whiter it is.

129| One thing more is owed to the medicines of trees, a notable medicine which they call oporice. It is made for dysentery and ailments of the stomach, in a congius of white must, 5 quinces boiled with their seeds over a slow heat, as many pomegranates, a sextarius of sorb apples and an equal measure of what they call Syrian rhus, and a half-ounce of saffron. It is cooked down to the thickness of honey. To these we shall subjoin the things that the Greeks, by sharing of names, have made doubtful, whether they are of trees.

130| Chamaedrys is an herb which is called trixago in Latin. Some have called it chamaerops, others Teucria. It has leaves the size of mint, in colour and in cutting like oak (others have said they are serrate, and that from it the saw was invented), with an almost purple flower. It is gathered full of juice among rocks, and is most effective, drunk and smeared on, against the poisons of serpents, likewise for the stomach, old cough, phlegm clinging in the throat, ruptures, convulsions, pains of the side.

131| It consumes the spleen, moves urine and the periods, and for that reason is effective in beginning dropsy, a handful of its brooms being boiled in 2 heminae of water down to a third. They make lozenges too by pounding it in water, for the purposes above. It heals abscesses and old ulcers, or foul ones, with honey. A wine is also made from it, for chest ailments. The juice of the leaves, with oil, disperses dimness of the eyes; for the spleen it is taken in vinegar. It warms when rubbed on.

132| Chamaedaphne has a single little branch, nearly a cubit high; its leaves are thinner than laurel; the seed is reddish, attached to the leaves. Fresh, it is smeared on headaches, it cools burnings, and for gripings it is drunk in wine. Its juice moves the periods and urine, drunk, and, applied in wool, difficult births.

133| Chamelaea has a likeness to olive leaves (these are bitter, however, and fragrant), on rocky ground, not exceeding a palm in height. It purges the bowels and draws off phlegm and bile, with the leaves boiled in 2 parts of wormwood, the juice drunk with honey. By the leaves laid on, ulcers also are cleansed. They say that if anyone picks it before sunrise and says that he is picking it for white spots of the eyes, then tied on it disperses that complaint, and that gathered in whatever way it is salutary to the eyes of draught animals and of cattle.

134| Chamaesyce has the leaves of a lentil, which do not lift themselves up, in dry, rocky places, and is useful for clearness of the eyes and against cataract, the juice being used as an ointment for scars, dimness and little clouds. It eases pains of the womb, applied in a bit of linen. Smeared on, it takes away warts of all kinds. It is good also for sufferers from orthopnoea.

135| Chamaecissos is eared like wheat, with usually five little branches, leafy (when it flowers it can be taken for a white violet), with a slender root. Sciatica sufferers drink its leaves, 3 obols in 2 cyathi of wine, for seven days, a very bitter draught. Chamaeleuce is called by us farfarum or farfugium. It grows beside rivers, with the leaf of a poplar, but larger. Its root is laid on cypress coals, and that fume is drunk through a funnel for an inveterate cough.

136| Chamaepeuce, similar to the larch in leaf, is proper for pains of the loins and spine. Chamaecyparissos, an herb drunk in wine, is powerful against the poisons of all serpents and scorpions. Ampeloprason grows in vineyards, with the leaves of a leek, heavy with its belching smell, effective against the stings of serpents. It moves urine and the periods, and drunk and applied checks eruptions of blood from the genital. It is given also to women after childbirth and against the bites of dogs. That also which is called stachys has a likeness to a leek, with longer and more numerous leaves, and a pleasant smell and a colour inclining to yellow. It drives the periods.

137| Clinopodium, which some call cleopiceton, others zopyrontion, others ocimoides, is like wild thyme, bushy, a palm high, among rocks, with a rounded circuit of leaves giving the look of the feet of a couch. It is drunk for convulsions, ruptures, strangury, the stings of serpents; likewise the juice of its decoction.

138| Now we shall subjoin herbs that are marvellous indeed but less famous, the famous ones being deferred to the following volumes. Centunculum is what our people call one with leaves resembling the hood of a cloak, lying on the fields; the Greeks call it clematis, of excellent effect for checking the bowels in austere wine. The same, pounded in oxymel or in 5 cyathi of hot water, in the weight of one denarius, checks blood, and so is effective also for the afterbirth of women.

139| But the Greeks have other clematids also, one which some call aetites, others lagine, some thin scammony. It has branches a foot long, leafy, not unlike scammony, except that the leaves are blacker and smaller. It is found in vineyards and fields. It is eaten like a vegetable, with oil and salt; it moves the bowels. The same is swallowed by dysentery patients with linseed in austere wine.

140| The leaves are applied to running of the eyes with pearl barley, a damp bit of linen being put beneath. Applied to scrofula they bring it to suppuration; then with axungia added they complete the cure; likewise for haemorrhoids, with green oil; they help consumptives with honey. They produce an abundance of milk also in food, and smeared on infants they nourish the hair; eaten in vinegar they stimulate desire.

141| There is another clematis, surnamed Egyptian, which by some is called daphnoides, by others polygonoides, with the leaf of laurel, long and slender, effective against serpents and particularly asps, drunk in vinegar.

142| Egypt produces this chiefly, and also aron, of which we spoke among the bulbs, which has a great dispute with dracontium; for some have said it is the same. Glaucias distinguished them by planting, pronouncing dracontium the wild aron. Some have called the root aron, but the stalk dracontium, altogether a different thing, if indeed this is what is called among us dracunculus. For the aros has a black root, rounded in breadth, and much larger, such as fills the hand; the dracunculus a reddish one, and coiled like a dragon, whence also its name.

143| Indeed the Greeks themselves set up an immense difference: by describing the seed of dracunculus as hot and biting, and with so much poison that its smell causes abortion in pregnant women, they carried aron to marvellous praises, preferring first in foods the female, since the male was harder and slower in cooking;

144| saying that it purges ailments of the chest; dried and sprinkled in a drink, or as an electuary, it moves urine and the periods; so too drunk in oxymel. For an ulcerated stomach and bowels it is to be drunk with ewe's milk; for cough they gave it cooked in ashes with oil. Others boiled it in milk so that the decoction was drunk. For running of the eyes they applied it boiled, likewise for bruises and tonsils.

145| Glaucias poured it in with oil for the complaint of haemorrhoids, smearing freckles with honey. He praised it also as an antidote against poisons, for pleurisy and peripneumonia in the same way as for coughers. The seed, ground with oil or rose oil, he poured in for earache. Dieuches gave it to coughers or those short of breath and orthopnoeic and those spitting pure matter, mixed with meal in baked bread; Diodotus gave it to consumptives as an electuary with honey, and for ailments of the lung, and applied it even to broken bones.

146| Smeared round the genitals, it draws out the offspring of all animals. The juice of the root with Attic honey disperses dimness of the eyes and ailments of the stomach; the broth of the decoction with honey, cough. Ulcers of all kinds, whether they are phagedaenae or cancers or creeping, or polypi in the nostrils, the juice cures marvellously.

147| The leaves are good for burns, cooked in wine and oil. Taken with salt and vinegar they empty the bowels, and cooked with honey they are good for dislocations; likewise for gouty joints with salt, fresh or dry. Hippocrates applied either to gatherings with honey. To draw the periods, 2 drachmae of the seed or root in 2 cyathi of wine suffice. The same drink, if women are not cleansed after childbirth, also draws out the afterbirth. Hippocrates applied the root itself as a pessary.

148| They say also that in a pestilence it is salutary in food. It disperses drunkenness. Serpents, and particularly asps, it drives off by its smell when it is burned, or intoxicates so that they are found stupefied. They also flee from people anointed with aron and laurel oil. Therefore they think it useful also against bites, given to drink in dark wine. Cheese is reported to keep best in the leaves of aros.

149| Dracunculus, which I have mentioned, is dug up when the barley is ripening, with the moon waxing. Serpents entirely flee anyone who has it. They say it is so good for the bitten, drunk; and that the power is greater if it is not touched with iron. Its juice is good for earache too.

150| That, however, which the Greeks call dracontion was shown to me in a threefold form: with the leaves of beet, not without a thyrsus, with a purple flower; this is like aron. Others showed one with a long root, as if marked and jointed, with three little stalks altogether, and leaves, ordering it to be boiled in vinegar against the stings of serpents. The third showing was with a leaf larger than the cornel's, with a reed-like root jointed, as they affirmed, with as many knots as it had years, and as many leaves; these gave it in wine or water against serpents.

151| There is also aris, which is born in the same Egypt, like aron, only smaller and with smaller leaves and above all in root, which yet fills the size of a large olive, the white one sending out a double stalk, the other only one. Each cures running ulcers, likewise burns and fistulas, a collyrium being inserted. They check spreading ulcers when smeared on, boiled in water and afterwards pounded with rose oil added. But there is one huge marvel: if the genitals of any female are touched, the animal is driven to destruction.

152| Myriophyllon, which our people call milifolium, is of a tender stalk, like fennel, with very many leaves, whence it received its name. It grows in marshes, of magnificent use for wounds with vinegar. It is drunk for difficulties of urine and of the bladder, or for shortness of breath, and for people thrown from a height. The same is most effective for toothache. Etruria gives this name to a herb that is slender in the meadows, leafy on its sides like a hair, of outstanding use for wounds, affirming that the sinews of oxen cut by the ploughshare are made firm by it and rejoined, with axungia added.

153| Pseudobunion has the leaves of a turnip, shrubby, a palm high, most praised in Crete. Against gripings, strangury, and pains of the sides and midriff, its branches are drunk, five or six at a time.

154| Myrris, which some call myrrhiza, others myrra, is most like hemlock in stalk and leaves and flower, only smaller and slighter, not unpleasant as food. It brings on the periods and expels offspring, with wine. They say that the same, drunk, is salutary in a pestilence. It helps consumptives too when given in a sup. It produces eagerness for food, and quenches the bites of phalangia. Its juice, when the plant has been steeped for three days in water, also cures ulcers on the face or head.

155| Oenobreches has the leaves of a lentil, a little longer, a reddish flower, a small and slender root. It grows round springs. Dried to the manner of meal and sprinkled in white wine, it ends strangury and checks the bowels. Its juice, with oil, moves sweats in those anointed.

156| In the promised account of marvellous herbs it occurs to me to say something also about the magical ones. For which are more marvellous? The first to make them famous in our world were Pythagoras and Democritus, who followed the Magi. By the coracesia and calicia, Pythagoras reports, water is frozen; I find no mention of them in others, nor anything else about them in him.

157| The same calls minyas, and by another name Corinthia, one by whose decoction in water, the juice, he says, the stings of serpents are cured at once, if they are fomented. He says that the same, poured out on the grass, brings incurable death on those who touch it with the foot or are chance-sprinkled, the nature of the poison being utterly monstrous except against poisons.

158| By the same Pythagoras a herb is called aproxis, whose root conceives fire from far off, like naphtha, of which we spoke among the marvels of the earth. The same reports that if any diseases befall the human body while cabbage is in flower, even when cured they feel a reminder of them whenever it flowers; and that if they befall when wheat, or hemlock, or violet is flowering, the condition is similar.

159| Nor does it escape me that this volume is ascribed by some to the physician Cleemporus, but persistent fame and antiquity claim it for Pythagoras, and this very fact brings authority to the volumes, if anyone else judged a work of his care worthy of that man, which who would believe Cleemporus did, when he published other works under his own name?

160| It is certain that the Chirocmeta are Democritus's. But in these he, after Pythagoras the most devoted to the Magi, reports how much more portentous things! For instance, the herb aglaophotis, which received its name from men's wonder at its exceptional colour, growing on the marbles of Arabia on the Persian side, for which reason it is also called marmaritis; the Magi use it when they wish to summon the gods.

161| The achaemenis, of the colour of electrum, growing without a leaf among the Taradastili of India, by drinking which in wine the guilty confess everything under torments through various imaginings of divinities; the same he calls hippophobas, since mares especially avoid it.

162| Theombrotion, he says, grows 30 schoeni from the Choaspes, resembling the painting on a peacock, of exceptional smell; this is drunk by the kings of the Persians against all the discomforts of the body; and from its steadiness [of mind and justice], the same is called semnion, from the majesty of power. Then another, adamantis, nursling of Armenia and Cappadocia; when this is brought near, lions are thrown on their backs with weary gaping jaws. The reason for the name is that it cannot be ground down. Arianis, he says, is born among the Arians, fiery in colour; it is gathered while the sun is in Leo. By its touch, wood anointed with oil is set alight.

163| Therionarca, growing in Cappadocia and Mysia, stupefies all wild beasts, and they are not revived except by being sprinkled with the urine of a hyena. Aethiopis, he says, grows in Meroe, and on that account is also called Merois, with the leaf of lettuce, most useful to dropsy patients drunk in honey wine; ophiusa, in Elephantine of the same Ethiopia, livid and hard to look at, by drinking which the terror and threats of serpents appear before the eyes so that people take their own lives from the fear; on that account sacrilegious persons are forced to drink it. Palm wine is hostile to it.

164| Thalassaegle, he says, is found about the river Indus, and on that account is called by another name potamaugis; people who drink it rave, with marvels before their eyes. Theangelis grows on Libanus in Syria, on the mountains Dicte of Crete, and at Babylon, and at Susa of Persia, and by drinking it the Magi divine; gelotophyllis in Bactria and round the Borysthenes. If this is drunk with myrrh and wine, various appearances come before the eyes and the laughing is not ended except by drinking pine-nut kernels with pepper and honey, in palm wine.

165| Hestiateris, he says, is so named in Persia from the banquet, because people are made merry by it, the same being also protomedia, by which they hold first rank with kings; casignete, because it is born by itself and not with any other herbs; the same dionysonymphas, because it combines wonderfully with wine. He names helianthes in the region of Themiscyra and on the maritime mountains of Cilicia, with the leaf of myrtle. With this boiled with lion's fat, saffron and palm wine added, the Magi and the kings of the Persians anoint themselves so that the body becomes pleasing to look at; therefore the same is called heliocallis.

166| Hermesias, he says, for begetting beautiful and good children, is not an herb but a composition of ground kernels of the pine nut with honey, myrrh, saffron, palm wine, afterwards with theombrotion and milk mixed in. He orders those about to beget to drink it, and from conception onward women in childbed nursing their offspring; so, he says, children come to excel in goodness of mind and form. And of all these he gives also the magical names.

167| To these Apollodorus, his follower, added the herb aeschynomene, because when a hand approaches its leaves draw together; another, crocis, by whose touch phalangia die; Crateuas, onothuris, by sprinkling which in wine the savagery of all animals is softened; and a man famous a little before our time in the art of grammar added anacampseros, by whose touch, entirely, loves return, even those laid aside with hatred. And let it be enough to have touched thus far on the remarkable things of the Magi in herbs, others about them to be told in a more fitting place.

168| Many have given an account of eriphia. This has a beetle in its stalk running up and down with the sound of a kid, whence it received its name. They report that nothing is better for the voice. The wool herb, given to fasting sheep, produces abundance of milk. Equally well known to the common people is lactoris, full of milk, which on being tasted rouses vomiting. Some say this is the same, others that it is like the one they call militaris, because it cures every wound made by iron within 5 days, applied with oil.

169| Stratiotes is also celebrated by the Greeks, but it grows only in Egypt and with the flooding of the Nile, like aizoon, except that it has larger leaves. It cools marvellously and heals wounds, smeared on with vinegar, likewise erysipelas and suppurations. Blood also that flows from the kidneys it marvellously checks, drunk with male frankincense.

170| An herb that has grown on a statue's head, gathered into a piece of some garment and bound with red thread, is reported to ease headache at once. An herb of any kind gathered from streams or rivers before sunrise, in such a way that no one sees the gatherer, tied on the left arm so that the patient does not know what it is, is reported to keep off tertian fevers. The herb lingua grows round springs. Its root, burnt and pounded with pig's fat (they add that it must be black and barren), mends bald patches, as an ointment in the sun.

171| A sieve being thrown down at a boundary, the herbs standing out within it, plucked and tied on pregnant women, hasten birth. An herb that grows over the dung heaps of the country is most effectively powerful against quinsies, drunk in water. An herb beside which dogs pass urine, pulled up without being touched by iron, cures dislocations very quickly.

172| The rumpotinus tree we have shown among the shrubs. Near this tree, when it is widowed of its vine, there grows an herb which the Gauls call rodarum. It has a stalk jointed like a fig twig, leaves of nettle whitish in the middle, the same turning wholly red in time, a silver flower, outstanding against swellings and heats and gatherings, pounded with old axungia in such a way that it is not touched with iron. The person anointed spits on his right three times. They say the remedy is more effective if three men of three nations anoint to the right.

173| An herb is called impia, hoary, with the look of rosemary, clothed and headed in the manner of a thyrsus. From it other little shoots rise, bearing their own little heads; on that account they called it impia, because the children rise above the parent. Others have preferred to think it was named thus because no animal touches it.

174| This plant, pounded between two stones, froths with a juice that is outstanding against quinsy when milk and wine are mixed in. A marvel is reported: that those who have tasted it are never attacked by that disease; and so it is given to pigs as well, and those that refuse to swallow the medicament die of that disease. There are some who think that if some of it is put into birds' nests, the chicks are then not choked when they gulp their food too greedily.

175| They call a plant "Venus' comb" from its likeness to combs; its root, pounded with mallow, draws out everything lodged in the body. The herb called exedum frees from torpor. The herb notia is familiar in the tanners' workshops under one name or another; I find that, drunk in wine or posca, it is most effective against the scorpion.

176| The Greeks wittily call a herb philanthropos, because it clings to clothes. A wreath of it placed on the head relieves headaches. As for the burr called canaria, pounded in wine with plantain and milifolium it heals carcinomas, being taken off every three days. It also cures pigs, if it is dug up without iron and added to the swill they are to drink, or given in milk and wine. Some add that the man digging it up should say: "This is the herb argemon, which Minerva found as a remedy for the pigs that taste of it."

177| Some have said that tordylon is the seed of sil, others that it is a herb in its own right, which they have also called syreon. And I find nothing else recorded about it except that it grows in the mountains; that, burned and drunk, it promotes the menses and the bringing up of phlegm from the chest, the root being more effective still; that the kidneys are healed by drinking its juice at three obols at a time; and that its root is also added to malagmata.

178| Grass itself, the commonest of herbs, creeps along with jointed internodes and often sends out new roots from these and from its tip. Everywhere else in the world its leaves taper to a slender point; only on Parnassus do they grow, ivy-like in appearance, more thickly than anywhere, with a fragrant white flower. No other plant is more welcome to draught animals, whether green or dried in hay and, when it is given to them, sprinkled with water.

179| They report that on Parnassus its juice too is collected, because it is so abundant; it is sweet. In its place, in the rest of the world, a decoction serves for closing wounds, which the herb itself also does when pounded, and it protects wounds from inflammation. Wine and honey are added to the decoction, and by some a third part each of frankincense, pepper and murra, and it is boiled once more in a copper vessel for toothache

180| and fluxes of the eyes. The root boiled in wine treats colic, difficulty of urine and ulcers of the bladder, and breaks up stones. The seed drives out urine more powerfully and stops the bowels and vomiting. It is a particular help for the bites of dragons. There are some who prescribe that 9 joints, either of one plant or from two or three plants up to this number of joints, be wrapped in black unwashed wool, as remedies for struma or panus.

181| They say the man who gathers it must be fasting; he must go in that state to the house of the absent patient he is treating, and when the patient comes in, say three times that he is giving a fasting medicine to a fasting man, and so tie it on, and do this for three days. The kind of grass that has 7 internodes is tied to the head most effectively against headaches. Some prescribe, for torments of the bladder, that grass boiled down in wine to half be drunk after the bath.

182| There are some who also speak of a "pointed grass" of three kinds. When there are points on the tip, five at most, they call it dactylon. These they roll together, put into the nostrils and pull out again, to make the blood flow. The second, which is like aizoum, they use with axle-grease for whitlows and pterygia of the nails, and when flesh has grown over the nails, and they call it dactylon because it heals the fingers.

183| The third kind is also a dactylon, but slender, and grows on ruined walls or on tiles. It has a caustic power. It stops spreading ulcers. Grass tied round the head stops flows of blood from the nostrils. It is reported that in the region of Babylon the grass that grows beside the roads kills camels.

184| Nor is the authority of fenugreek any less; they call it telis, others carphos, some buceras, others aegoceras, because the seed is like little horns; we call it silicia. How it is sown we have shown in its place. Its power is to dry, soften and dissolve. The juice of the decoction relieves many of women's ills, whether there is a hardness or a swelling or a contraction of the womb: they are fomented with it and sit in it; injected, it also helps.

185| It thins scurf on the face. Boiled with nitrum added and applied, it treats the spleen, and likewise in vinegar. So too, boiled, it treats the liver. Diocles gave its seed to women in difficult labour, pounded, to the measure of an acetabulum, in 9 cyathi of sapa, so that they drank a third of it and then were bathed in hot water; while they were sweating in the bath he gave them half of what remained, and then the rest after the bath, as the supreme remedy.

186| The same man applied fenugreek meal boiled with barley or linseed in honey-water from below against torments of the womb, and also laid it on the lower belly. He treated lepra and freckles with sulphur mixed in an equal proportion with the meal, the skin first being prepared with nitrum, smearing it on several times a day and forbidding anointing. Theodorus mixed with fenugreek a fourth part of cleaned nasturtium in very sharp vinegar for lepra.

187| Timon gave fenugreek seed to drink, to the measure of half an acetabulum, with 9 cyathi of sapa and water, to promote the menses. Nor is there any doubt that its decoction is most useful for ulcerated wombs and intestines, as the seed is for the joints and the precordia; and if it is boiled with mallow, with honey wine added afterwards, the drink is praised above all others for the womb and intestines, since even the steam of the decoction does a great deal of good. Fenugreek seed, boiled, also corrects the foul smell of the armpits. The meal, with wine and nitrum, quickly removes porrigo and scurf of the head.

188| Boiled in hydromel with axle-grease added, it treats the genitals, and likewise panus, parotid swellings, gout of the feet and of the hands, the joints, and flesh coming away from the bones; kneaded with vinegar, dislocations. It is also applied to the spleen boiled in nothing but vinegar and honey. Kneaded with wine it cleans carcinomas, and then, with honey added, heals them completely. A gruel made from the meal is also taken for an ulcerated chest and a long-standing cough. It is boiled until the bitterness is gone; then honey is added. Now the very fame of herbs will be told.

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