54 FLORA HOM(COPATHICA. 
the Asarabacca are identical, and he affirms that in the district of 
Verona, the Asarum is called Bacchera, and that the English 
name Asarabacca is a union of the two, Asarum and Baccaris ; 
but it seems to have been a disputed point, even in the ancient 
times, as to what was the Baccaris. Galen says that it wasa 
term applied both to a herb and a Lydian ointment; others 
have supposed it to be the Foxglove (Digitalis). Matthiolus 
and Bauhin think the Baccaris is the Conyza squamosa, to which 
it seems most identical, according to Adams. Pliny evidently 
did not confound the two plants ; in lib. xxi. cap. vi. (Holland’s 
Trans.), he says: “There is another plant which the Greeks call 
Acagev, very different from Bacearis. I do find that this plant 
is called Asarum, because it adorneth not garlands (from a, non; 
and caigw, to adorn).” Macer says that Asarum was called 
Vulgago. “ Est Asaron, Grece, Vulgago dicta Latiné :— 
“This herbe Asaron do the Grecians name; 
Whereas the Latines Vulgago clepe the same.” 
It was also called by the great learned philosophers, according 
to Gerarde, Asa apews, t. e., Martis sanguinis, or the blood of 
Mars; and Culpeper in his Herbal says it is under the dominion 
of Mars, and therefore inimical to nature. In giving an account 
of the virtues of the herb, this same physician deprecates the 
use of violent cathartics, etc., in the following words: “I shall 
desire ignorant people to forbear the use of the leaves, -.%%...9 
vote The trath 2 taney purging and yomiting medi- 
cines as little as any man breathing doth, for they weaken 
nature; nor shall ever advise them to be used unless upon 
urgent necessity. If a physician be Nature’s servant, it is his 
duty to strengthen his mistress as much as he can, and weaken 
her as little as may be.” 
Dodoneus (Lyte’s Translation, book iii.) gives the following 
account of the virtues of Asarabacca: “'The root boiled in wine 
and drunken, is good against the strangury, the cough, shortness 
of breath, and difficulty of breathing, conyulsions, cramps, and 
_the shrinking together of members. 
