BOOK XXII. xLiii. 87-xuv. 90 



shrillest, women are most amorous and men most 

 backward in sexual unions, as though it were through 

 Nature's providence that this stimulant is at its best 

 when badly needed. OtFensive odour from the arm- 

 pits is corrected by an ounce of" the root, without 

 the pith, in three heminae of Falernian wine boiled 

 down to one third, to be taken fasting after the bath 

 and again after food, the dose being a cyathus at a 

 time. Xenocrates assures us of a remarkable thing, 

 that he has proved by experiment, that the offensive 

 smell passes off from the armpits by way of the urine. 



XLIV. Sow-thistle too is edible — at any rate >iow-thisite. 

 CalHmachus makes Hecale " set it before Theseus 

 — both the pale kind and the dark. Both are Hke 

 lettuce, except that they are prickly, with a stem a 

 cubit high, angular and hollow inside, which on being 

 broken streams with a milky juice. The pale kind, 

 whieh shines because of the milk in it, is good for 

 asthma if taken with salad-dressing as is lettuce. 

 Erasistratus informs us that it carries away stone 

 in the urine, and that to chew it purifies foul breath. 

 Three cyathi of the juice warmed in white wine 

 and oil aid deHvery, but the expectant mother must 

 take a walk immediately after drinking it ; it is also 

 given in broth. A decoction of the stem itself makes 

 the milk abundant in nurses and improves the com- 

 plexion of the babies, being very useful to those 

 women who are subject to curdling their milk. The 

 juice is injected into the ears, and a cyathus of it is 

 drunk warm for strangury, for gnawing pains of the 

 stomach with cucumber seed and pine kernels. It is 

 used also externally for abscesses at the anus. It 

 is taken in drink for the poison of snakes and scor- 

 pions, but the root is used as an external application. 



355 



