BOOK XX. 11. 3-in. 5 

 II. We have said'' that there is a wild cucumber cncumbers. 



' driier ' 



is made the drug called elaterium by pressing the purge. 

 juice out of the seed. Unless, to prepare it, the 

 cucumber be cut open before it is ripe, the seed 

 spurts out, even endangering the eyes. After 

 being gathered, the cucumber is kept for one night 

 and then cut open on the next day with a reed. 

 The seed too is kept in ash to prevent the juice 

 from running away. This when pressed out is 

 received in rain water, where it falls to the bottom. 

 Then it is thickened in the sun, and made into 

 lozenges for the great benefit of mankind, being 

 good for dim vision, eye diseases and sores of the 

 eyehds.^ It is said that if the roots of vines are 

 touched by this juice the grapes are not attacked by 

 birds. The root too when boiled in vinegar is used 

 as ointment in cases of gout, and its juice cures 

 toothache. Dried and mixed with resin it heals 

 impetigo, itch, what are called psora and lichen, 

 parotid sweUings and superficial abscesses ; '^ it 

 restores the natural colour to scars, while the juice 

 of the leaves mixed with vinegar and poured by drops 

 into the ears is a remedy for deafness. 



III. The proper season to prepare elaterium is 

 the autumn,*^ and no drug keeps for a longer period. 

 It begins to be potent when three years old ; if it 

 is desired to use it earher, the lozenges must be 

 made less harsli by warming them in vinegar in 

 a new clay pot over a slow fire. The older it i^; the 

 better, and it has been known to keep, so Theo- 

 phrastus ^ tells us, for two hundred yeai-s, and its 

 power to piit out the flame of a himp it retains right 

 up to the fiftieth year. Indeed, the test of genuine 



