Cliiip. 2.] THI5 WILD CUCUMBER. 20/ 



tracting iron, and another stone/ again, tliat of repelling it ; 

 and that the diamond, that jjride of luxury and opulence, 

 though infrangible by every other object, and presenting a 

 resistance that cannot be overcome, is broken asunder by a 

 he-goafs blood ^ — in addition to numerous other marvels of 

 which we shall have to speak on more appropriate occasions, 

 equal to this or still more wonderful even. My only request is 

 that pardon may be accorded me for beginning with objects of 

 u more humble nature, though still so greatly conducive to our 

 Ileal th — I mean the garden plants, of which I shall now pro- 

 ceed to speak. 



CHAP. 2. (1.) THE WILD CUCUMBER; TWENTY-SIX REMEDIES. 



We have already stated^ that there is a wild cucumber, con- 

 siderably smaller than the cultivated one. From this cucum- 

 ber the medicament known as *' elaterium" is prepared, being 

 the juice extracted from the seed.^ To obtain this juice the 

 fruit is cut before it is ripe — indeed, if this precaution is not 

 taken at an early period, the seed is apt to spirt'* out and be pro- 

 ductive of danger to the eyes. After it is gathered, the fruit is 

 kept whole for a night, and on the following day an incision 

 is made in it with a reed. The seed, too, is generally sprinkled 

 with ashes, with the view of retaining in it as large a quan- 

 tity of the juice as possible. When the juice is extracted, it 

 is received in rain water, where it falls to the bottom ; after 

 Avhicli it is thickened in the sun, and then divided into lozenges, 



* The " tlieamedts." See B. xxxvi. c. 25. 



5 Plinjfis the only authur wlio makes meation of this singularly absurd 

 notion. 



•^ In B. xix. c. 24 : so, too, Dioscorides, B. iv. c. 154. The -wild cu- 

 cumber of PHny, as Fee observes, is in reality not a cucumber, but a 

 totally different plant, the Cucumis silvestris asininus of C. iJauliin, the 

 Momordioa elaterium of Linua^us, or squirting cucumber. 



'' Elaterium, Fee says, is not extracted from the seed, but is the juice 

 of the fruit itself, as Pliny, contradicting himself, elsewhere informs us. 

 Theophrastus commits the same error, which Dioscorides does not ; und 

 it is not improbable that Pliny "has copied from two sources the method 

 of making it. 



** Meaning the juice and seed combined, probably. Fee thinks that it 

 is to this the medicament owes its name, from tXavvio, to " drive'' or 

 "impel." It is mucli more prohable, however, that the medicine was so 

 called from it^ strong purgative powers ; for, as Galen tells us, iXariipioi' 

 was a name given to purgative medicines iu general. 



