ENQUIRY INTO PLANTS, IX. xx. 4-5 



1 Birth wort is a stout plant and is bitter to the taste : 

 it is black in colour and fragrant ; the leaf is round. 

 However there is not much of the plant above 

 ground. It grows especially 2 on mountains, and 

 then 3 it is best. Many uses of it for various purposes 

 are enumerated ; it is best for bruises on the head, 

 good also for other wounds, against snake-bites, to 

 produce sleep, for the womb as a pessary : for some 

 purposes it is soaked with water and applied as a 

 plaster, for others it is scraped into honey and olive- 

 oil : against snake-bites it is drunk in sour wine and 

 also sprinkled over the bite ; to induce sleep it is 

 given pounded up in black dry wine : 4 in cases of 

 prolapsus uteri it is used in water as a lotion. This 

 plant then seems to have a surpassing variety of 

 usefulness. 



5 Of scammony, as though by contrast, only the 

 juice is useful and no other part. 



Of male-fern no part but the root is useful and it 

 has a sweet astringent taste. It expels the flat 

 worm. It has no seed nor juice : and they say it 

 is ripe for cutting in autumn. 



6 (This worm naturally infests certain races : 

 speaking generally the following are liable to it 

 the Egyptians, the Arabians, the Armenians, the 

 Matadides, the Syrians, the Cilicians : the Thracians 

 have it not, nor the Phrygians. Among the Hellenes 

 those Thebans who frequent wrestling-schools and 

 the Boeotians generally are liable to it : but not the 

 Athenians.) 



Of all drugs, to speak generally, those are better 

 which come from places that are wintry, face the 



4 Cited by Apollon. Hist. Mirab. 29. 



a Diosc. 4. 170; Plin. 27. 78-80. 6 Plin. 27. 145. 



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