ASTER AS REMEDY FOR BURNING STOMACH 39 
ASTER PROPERTIES 
References to the Aster Atticus as a plant long in repute 
among herbalists occur in Dioscorides, Pliny, Galen, and their 
commentators, especially in Ruellius, 1536, Euricius Cordus 
1534, Matthioli, John and Adam Lonitzer. 
Its old Greek name Bubonion testified to its ancient reputation 
for healing inguinal sores, a reputation still current among Arabic 
writers, as Avicenna and Rhases. Fuchs and some other early 
writers of the sixteenth century say it was not then kept by the 
apothecaries, but it continued to appear as a potent remedy as late 
as the edition of Parkinson in 1640, the second edition of Salmon’s 
New London Dispensatory in 1682, and Quincy’s Dispensatory 
in 1721; * also in the various editions of Lonitzer’s Kreuterbuch 
in Germany, 1553, and onward, modified editions derived from 
which were appearing in Germany as late as 1783. Some related 
species (Inula, once classed as Aster) are still so employed “ for 
inflammatory buboes,’’—Foster’s Encyclopaedic Medical Diction- 
ary, N. Y., 1890. 
No other Aster species has had any extended medical history, 
though a number of American species have begun to appear in 
local or occasional medical use, fide Foster, 1890; their prop- 
erties however appear to be perhaps mild and certainly little tested. 
In citing the various uses claimed for his Aster Atticus, I shall 
begin with the order of properties taken up by Dioscorides, etc., 
and then consider the manner of its use. 
ASTER AS STOMACHIC 
Aster as a Remedy for a Burning Stomach.—Aster Atticus is 
a remedy for a burning stomach, applied as a plaster. Qoshet 
02 atépayov éxxvpobpevov, xataxhaaaopsvov, D.+ 
* And this formed in Germany the basis of the Lexicon physico-medicum of 1787. 
t Deemed perhaps an interpolation by Sprengel.  Dioscorides repeating the 
bove under his ‘‘ purple violet’? may have been intending to speak of Aster still. Its 
relative, the chamomile, Anthemis nobilis L., is still used also, as in Dioscorides’ time, 
as astomachic. Another relative (presumably) the Conyzites of the Geoponica, bk. 
viii., c. 10, was mixed with a Greek wine to give it stomachic efficacy, as there 
described ‘hoc vinum ictericis et stomachicis commodum.”’ 
«The modern Greek household di 1 fe I 
hl Saal nnas favor. 
[rosemary] pretty near like balsam, Cexopovia the elder tree (which we less often call 
