WeRead Powered by ReaderPub
The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 4 (of 6) cover

The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 4 (of 6)

Chapter 245: CHAP. 89.—MARRUBIUM OR PRASION, OTHERWISE LINOSTROPHON, PHILOPAIS, OR PHILOCHARES: TWENTY-NINE REMEDIES.
By the Elder Pliny
Open in WeRead

Explore more books like this:

History - AncientScience - Earth/Agricultural/Farming

About This Book

The text compiles practical and encyclopedic guidance on crop cultivation and plant uses, beginning with cereals and farm management — types of grain, sowing and harvesting schedules, ploughing, seed selection, storage, and maladies — plus weather and stellar prognostics for agricultural timing. It proceeds to flax and garden plants, detailing varieties, planting and processing methods, garden layout, and pest and disease remedies. The final section assembles medicinal preparations and numerous remedies derived from vegetables and herbs, listing applications and recipes for treating ailments using garden-grown plants.

CHAP. 89.—MARRUBIUM OR PRASION, OTHERWISE LINOSTROPHON, PHILOPAIS, OR PHILOCHARES: TWENTY-NINE REMEDIES.

Most medical writers have spoken in high terms of marrubium, or horehound, as a plant of the very greatest utility. Among the Greeks, it is called “prasion”1729 by some, by others “linostrophon,”1730 and by others, again, “philopais”1731 or “philochares:”1732 it is a plant too well known to require any description.1733 The leaves1734 and seed beaten up, together, are good for the stings of serpents, pains of the chest and side, and inveterate coughs. The branches, too, boiled in water with panic,1735 so as to modify its acridity, are remarkably useful for persons troubled with spitting1736 of blood. Horehound is applied also, with grease, to scrofulous swellings. Some persons recommend for a cough, a pinch of the fresh seed with two fingers, boiled with a handful of spelt1737 and a little oil and salt, the mixture to be taken fasting. Others, again, regard as quite incomparable for a similar purpose an extract of the juices of horehound and fennel. Taking three sextarii of the extract, they boil it down to two, and then add one sextarius of honey; after which they again boil it down to two, and administer one spoonful of the preparation daily, in one cyathus of water.

Beaten up with honey, horehound is particularly beneficial for affections of the male organs; employed with vinegar, it cleanses lichens, and is very salutary for ruptures, convulsions, spasms, and contractions of the sinews. Taken in drink with salt and vinegar, it relaxes the bowels, promotes the menstrual discharge, and accelerates the after-birth. Dried, powdered, and taken with honey, it is extremely efficacious for a dry cough, as also for gangrenes and hang-nails.1738 The juice, too, taken with honey, is good for the ears and nostrils: it is a remedy also for jaundice, and diminishes the bilious secretions. Among the few antidotes1739 for poisons, it is one of the very best known.

The plant itself, taken with iris and honey, purges the stomach and promotes expectorations: it acts, also, as a strong diuretic, though, at the same time, care must be taken not to use it when the bladder is ulcerated and the kidneys are affected. It is said, too, that the juice of horehound improves the eyesight. Castor speaks of two varieties of it, the black horehound and the white, which last he considers to be the best. He puts the juice of it into an empty eggshell, and then mixes the egg with it, together with honey, in equal proportions: this preparation used warm, he says, will bring abscesses to a head, and cleanse and heal them. Beaten up, too, with stale axle-grease and applied topically, he says, horehound is a cure for the bite of a dog.