BOOK XXVI. xxvii. 42-xxviii. 44 



spine, as does powdered stoechas or betony, taken 

 in hydromel. 



XXVIII. The greatest part however of man's Diseases < 

 trouble is caused by the belly, the gratification of l^J^^'"'' 

 which is the life's work of the majority of mankind. 

 For at one time it does not allow food to pass, at another 

 it will not retain it, at another it does not take " it, at 

 another it does not digest it ; and so much have our 

 customs degenerated that it is chiefly through his 

 food that a man dies. This, the most troublesome 

 organ in the body, presses as does a creditor, making 

 its demands several times a day. It is for the belly's 

 sake especially that avarice is so acquisitive ; for its 

 sake luxury uses spices, voyages are made to the 

 Phasis, and the bottom of the ocean is explored. 

 Nobody, again, is led to consider how base an organ 

 it is by the foulness of its completed work. There- 

 fore the tasks of medicine concerned with the belly 

 are very numerous. Looseness of the bowels is 

 checked by a drachma dose of fresh scordotis beaten 

 up with wine, or by the same quantity taken in a 

 decoction, by polemonia in wine, which is also given 

 for dysentery, by root of verbascum in doses of two 

 fingers' size taken in water, the seed of nymphaea 

 heraclia taken with wine, the upper root of xiphium, 

 the dose being a drachma by weight, taken in 

 vinegar, the seed of plantain beaten up in wine, 

 plantain itself boiled in vinegar, or groats taken in 

 plantain juice, also the plant boiled with lentils, or 

 the plant dried, powdered and sprinkled in drink 

 with parched and pounded poppies, juice of plantain 

 injected or drunk, or betony in wine made warm 

 with hot iron. Betony is also administered in a 

 dry wine for coeliac affections, for which hiberis also 



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