104 Aster History; HippocrATEs 
about 100 B. C.; the letter is just such a self-laudatory epistle as. 
many an author has concocted as an humorous introduction to his 
works, without the intention or at the time, the possibility, of de- 
ceiving any one; and this letter cannot therefore be adduced in 
proof that the Aster of Cratevas was one of the remedies used by 
Hippocrates. 
Later practice among the Greeks of the Roman Empire ex- 
alted the Aster as a remedy for inguinal tumors. Did that use 
for it extend so far back as Hippocrates? We search his treatise 
‘ad inguen” * in vain for statements that may show which were 
the plants that he used. Will we have better success when we 
examine Hippocrates’ detailed reports + of cases of inguinal tumor 
which he had himself treated? No, he tells us of their num- 
ber, of their fatal endings, of their complication { with fever, nar- 
rates the personal case of the eunuch, § and that of the fullers, || 
and their three months’ lingering ; but omits, as usual, any mention 
of what his own treatment had been. Yet he immediately tanta- 
lizes the inquirer, in the very next case considered, by specifying for 
once the remedies he would use ; but this case proves to be merely 
of cholera morbus, and though one of the remedies was itself a 
composite, a Lactuca, ** it has no immediate bearing on Hippo- 
crates’ remedies for tumors or for his use of Aster. 
There remains one other class of evidence from Hippocrates 
which while it may not be positive, will at least point to a very 
probable result. It is his use of the name polyophthalmon, the 
plant Many-eyes if we render it literally, a plant-name whic 
Hippocrates’ manner of reference shows was then in familiar use, 
but which seems not to have reached us elsewhere in literature. 
Soe ee Be sate the ord is stil in user in mode 
Z Hippocrates’ epi dbowr, edn, Kuhn, 574 sq. Also Foés’ Lat. tr., ‘Ad sa 
mat, I; m7 $q., edn. of Weckel, 1596. Also Adams’ Eng. tr. The Genuine 
of Hippoerates,”” 1: 714, “On Airs,” mepi aé | 
. . Pw, 
THis pocrates, edn. Kuhn, vol. 3; being vol. 23 of Kuhn’s Medicoram Graecorum 
opera omnia. 
** Used together with porrum, cepa, brassica, 
tf Contopoulos’ Modern Greek Lexicon, 
pepo, cucumeris and ervum. : 
Smyrna and London, 1868, and Lowndes 
se for 
