Chap. 39.] THE IASIONE. 423 



is used, too, for the cure of wounds inflicted by serpents and all 

 kinds of animals that sting ; so much so, indeed, that, as the 

 story goes, stags, by eating of it, fortify themselves against the 

 attacks of serpents. The root, too, applied topically, with the 

 addition of nitre, is a cure for fistula, but, when wanted for 

 this purpose, it must be dried first, so as to retain none of the 

 juice ; though, on the other hand, this juice does not at all 

 impair its efficacy as an antidote to the poison of serpents. 



CHAP. 38. THE SCANDIX I NINE KEMEDIES. THE ANTH1USCUM I 



TWO EEMEDIES. 



The scandix, 1 too, is reckoned by the Greeks in the number 

 of the wild vegetables, as we learn from Opion and Erasis- 

 tratus. Boiled, it arrests 2 looseness of the bowels ; and the 

 seed of it, administered with vinegar, immediately stops 

 hiccup. It is employed topically for burns, and acts as a diure- 

 tic ; a decoction of it is good, too, for affections of the stomach, 

 liver, kidneys, and bladder. It is this plant that furnished 

 Aristophanes with his joke 3 against the poet Euripides, that 

 his mother used to sell not real vegetables, but only scandix. 



The anthriscum 4 would be exactly the same plant as the 

 scandix, if its leaves were somewhat thinner and more' odor- 

 iferous. Its principal virtue is that it reinvigorates the body 

 when exhausted by sexual excesses, and acts as a stimulant 

 upon the enfeebled powers of old age. It arrests leucorrhcea 

 in females. 



CHAP. 39. THE IASIONE; FOUR REMEDIES. 

 The iasione, 5 which is also looked upon as a wild vegetable, 

 is a creeping plant, full of a milky juice : it bears a white 



1 Sprengel identifies it with the ChaBropbyllum sativum of Linnaeus, the 

 scandix cerifolium, our common chervil ; but Fee considers it to be the 

 same as the Scandix pecten Veneris of Linnaeus, the Venus' comb chervil. 

 Pliny has mentioned a " scandix" also in B. xxi. c. 52, but erroneously, 

 Fee thinks. 



2 It is not used for any medicinal purposes at the present day. 



3 Acharn. A. ii. sc. 4 : " Get some scandix from your mother, and give 

 it me." The same joke also appears in the "Equites ;" and A. Gellius, 

 B. xv. c. 20, says that Theopompus speaks of the mother of Euripides as 

 having been a greengrocer. 



4 Fee identifies it with the Anthriscus odoratus of Linnams, the culti- 

 vated chervil. See B. xxi. c. 52. 



t See B. xxi. c. 65. 



