BOOK XXIII. Lxxvii. 147-149 



cough ; they are good, hovvever, for those who intend 

 to vomit fasting, for tenesmus and for colic, as they 

 bring away phlegm." Taken in time these nuts 

 deaden the effects of poisons, neutralize onions and 

 make their flavour milder. They are applied to 

 inflammation of the ears, with rue and a Httle honey 

 to the breasts and to sprains, with rue and oil to 

 quinsy, and with onion, salt and honey to the bites of 

 dogs and of humans. By a walnut shell a hollow 

 tooth is cauterized.'' If the shell be burnt and 

 beaten up with the addition of oil or wine, to anoint 

 a baby's head with the mixture is to promote the 

 growth of hair, and this preparation is also used for 

 mange. The more walnuts eaten, the easier it is to 

 expel tape-worms. Very old walnuts are a cure 

 for gangrenes and carbuncles, as also for bruises ; the 

 bark <^ of walnuts cures Hchen and dysentery, and the 

 pounded leaves with vinegar cure ear-ache. Wlien 

 the mighty king Mithridates had been overcome, Cn. 

 Pompeius found in a private note-book in his cabinet 

 a prescription for an antidote written in the king's 

 own hand-writing : — two dried walnuts, two figs and 

 twenty leaves of rue were to be pounded together 

 with the addition of a pinch of salt ; he who took this 

 fasting would be immune to all poison for that day. 

 The kernels of walnuts chewed by a fasting person 

 and appHed to the bite of a mad dog are said to be a 

 sovereign remedy. 



* Commentators including Fee wonder how this could be 

 done. Perhaps walnut juice was supposed to have caustic 

 properties, or invritur may have replaced a word meaning to 

 scrape (with the hardened shell). 



"■ Fee says the bark of the tree and not the shell of the nut. 

 This view seems probable, for the use of the leaves foUows 

 immediately. 



