BOOK XXIV. xci. 142-XC11. 145 



called the root aron, but the stem dracontium, though 

 the latter is a totally different plant, if at least it is 

 the same as that called by the Romans dracunculus. 

 For the aron has a black root, broad and round, and 

 much larger, large" enough to fill the hand, but 

 dracunculus a reddish one Hke a coiled snake,* from 

 which its name is derived. 



XCII. The Greeks themselves moreover have put 

 a wide difference between the two plants. They 

 describe the seed of dracunculus as hot, with so 

 foul a stench that the smell causes pregnant women 

 to miscarry ; aron they have lauded to the skies 

 as an excellent food,'^ preferring however the female 

 plant, on the ground thnt the male is harder, and 

 slower to cook,'^ adding that it clears the chest of 

 disoi-ders, and that dried and sprinkled in drink or 

 made into an electuary it is diuretic and an em- 

 menagogue, as it is also when drunk in oxymel. 

 They prescribed it to be drunk in sheep's milk for 

 ulcerated stomach and bowels ; cooked on hot ash 

 and taken in oil they gave it for a cough. Others 

 boiled it in milk for the decoction to be drunk. 

 Thoroughly boiled it was appHed by them to fluxes 

 from the eyes, and likewise to bruises and to affected 

 tonsils. Glaucias « injected it in oil for troublesome 

 piles, using it with honey as an ointment for freckles. 

 He recommended it also as an antidote against 

 poisons, and, prepared as for coughs, for pleurisy and 



■* Or, " slower to cHgest," if coquo ever = concoquo. 



' The emendation of MayhofF (tonsiUis Glaucias copied as 

 tonsillas) is confirmed by the reading tonsillas, and by the 

 mention of the physician Glaucias three sections earlier. Both 

 Sillig and Jan thought that a name had been lost as a subject to 

 infudit. 



103 



