402 PLINy's NATUIIAL HISTOBT. [Book XXII. 



Por, in fact, there are certain plants which have been created 

 as remedies for the diseases of animals, the Divinity being 

 bounteously lavish of his succours and resources ; so much 

 so, indeed, that we cannot suflSciently admire the wisdom with 

 which he has arranged them according to the classes of ani- 

 mated beings which they are to serve, the causes which give 

 rise to their various maladies, and the times at which they are 

 likely to be in requisition : hence it is that there is no class 

 of beings, no season, and, so to speak, no day, that is without 

 its remedy. 



CHAP. 15. (13.) THE NETTLE : SIXTY-ONE REMEDIES. 



What plant can there possibly be that is more an object of 

 our aversion than the nettle ?"^ And yet, in addition to the 

 oil which we have already mentioned^^ as being extracted from 

 it in Egypt, it abounds in medicinal properties. The seed of 

 it, according to Nicander, is an antidote to the poison of hem- 

 lock,^® of fungi, and of quicksilver.'^^ ApoUodorus prescribes 

 it, too, taken in the broth of a boiled tortoise,®^ for the bite of 

 the salamander,**^ and as an antidote for the poison of henbane, 

 serpents, and scorpions. The stinging pungency even of the 

 nettle has its uses ; for, by its contact, it braces the uvula, and 

 eifects the cure of prolapsus of the uterus, and of procidence 

 of the anus in infants. By touching the legs of persons in a 

 lethargy, and the forehead more particularly, with nettles, 



tlie names 'nnrocpaeQ and i7r7r6(pai(TTov have another origin, and that 

 they are compounds ot'^aoi;, "lustre," — from the brilliancy which they were 

 said to impart to cloths — and 'iTnrog, in an augmentative sense, meaning 

 " great lustre." 



''^ See B. xxi. c. 55. Only two species of the nettle, Fee remarks, wera 

 known to the ancients, the Urtica urens and the U. dioica ; and these have 

 been confounded by Pliny and other writers. 



'' In B. XV. c. 7. The Urtica urens has no oleaginous principles, and 

 the oil of nettles, as Fee says, must have been a medicinal composition, 

 the properties of which are more than hypothetical. The plant boiled, lie 

 remarks, can have no medicinal properties whatever, and it is with justice 

 excluded from the modern Materia Medica. It is, however, still employed ' 

 by some few practitioners, and the leaves are used, in some cases, to restore 

 the vital action, by means of urtication. 



■^^ " Cicutae." 



"9 Mercury, as already mentioned in a previous Note, is not poisonous. 



■^ " Testudinis." He may, possibly, mean a turtle. 



«i See B. X. c. 86. 



