BOOK XXII. Lxxii. 148-1AX111. 151 



efficacious, as well as epilepsy, swollen liver and snake 

 bites. It promotes, the grain in particular, men- 

 struation and urine ; it is good for lichen, inflam- 

 mation of the testicles, jaundice and dropsy. All 

 kinds of cliickpea are injurious to ulcerated bladder 

 and to the kidneys. They are more beneficial with 

 honey for gangrenous sores, especially for those 

 called malignant. Warts of every kind some treat 

 by touching each wart with a single chickpea at 

 the new moon ; the chickpeas they tie in a Hnen 

 cloth and throw behind them, believing that so the 

 warts go away. Roman authorities recommend that 

 ram's-head chickpeas be thoroughly boiled in water 

 with salt, two cyathi of it to be taken at a time for 

 strangury ; they hold too that this treatment brings 

 away stone from the bladder and cures jaundice. 

 The water in which tlie leaves and stalks of the chick- 

 pea have been boiled, if used as hot as possible to 

 foment the feet, soothe gouty pains, as does an 

 application of the plant itself, pounded up and 

 warmed. The water from boiled cohimbine chickpea 

 is believed to lessen the rigors of tertian and quartan 

 agues. The dark kind, however, pounded up with 

 half a gall-nut and applied in raisin wine, cures 

 ulcers of the eyes. 



LXXIII. About the bitter vetch I have said a Bitter veich. 

 few things in my note concerning it," a pulse to 

 which, applied in vinegar, old authorities attributed 

 a poMcr no less than that they did to cabbage for 

 snake bites and for those of crocodiles and of men. 

 If anybody eats it fsisting every day, the spleen, 

 according to very rehable authorities, is reduced in 

 size. Its meal removes not only pimples from the 

 face but also spots from the skin on all parts of the 



401 



