Chap. 90.] PSYLLIOX. 135 



trodden upon ; it is very efficacious, too, for poisons. In cases 

 of head-ache, the head should be rubbed with hellebore, boiled 

 and beaten up in olive oil, or oil of roses, or else with peuce- 

 danum steeped in olive oil or rose oil, and vinegar. This last 

 plant, made lukewarm, is very good also for hemicrania^^ and 

 vertigo. It being of a heating nature, the body is rubbed with 

 the root as a sudorific. 



CHAP. 90. — PSTLLION, CYNOIDES, CETSTALLION", SICELICON, OR 

 CYNOMTIA ; SIXTEEN EEMEDIES. THEYSELINUM : ONE EEMEDY. 



Psyllion,^ cynoides, crystallion, sicelicon, or cynomyia, has 

 a slender root, of which no use is made, and numerous thin 

 branches, with seeds resembling those of the bean, at the ex- 

 tremities.^''' The leaves of it are not unlike a dog's head in 

 shape f^ and the seed, which is enclosed in berries, bears a 

 resemblance to a flea — whence its name '' psyllion." This plant 

 is generally found growing in vineyards, is of a cooling nature, 

 and is extremely efficacious as a dispellent. The seed of it is 

 the part made use of; for head-ache, it is applied to the fore- 

 head and temples with rose oil and vinegar, or else with 

 oxycrate ; it is used as a liniment for other purposes also. 

 Mixed in the proportion of one acetabulum to one sextarius of 

 water, it is left to coagulate and thicken ; after which it is 

 beaten up, and the thick solution is used as a liniment for all 

 kinds of pains, abscesses, and inflammations. 



Aristolochia is used as a remedy for wounds in the head ; it 

 has the property, too, of extracting fractui'ed bones, not only 

 from other parts of the body, but the cranium in particular. 

 The same, too, with plistolochia. 



Thryselinum^^ is a plant not unlike parsley ; the root of it, 

 eaten, carries off pituitous humours from the head. 



^ Or " meagrim." 



36 Identified with the Plantago Psyllium of Linnaeus, our Fleawort, 

 Fleaseed, or Fleabane. 



2'' Nothing, Fee says, can be more absurd than this description of the 

 plant. 



38 Whence its name "cynoides" and "cynomyia." 



2^ This plant has not been identified ; Wild water-parsley, perhaps a kind 

 of Sium, has been suggested. 



