30 
plint's natural histoky. 
[Book XXIV. 
in maladies of the spleen victuals and drink are given to the 
patient in vessels made of this wood. 
A medical author too, of high repute, has asserted that a 
sprig broken from off this tree, without being allowed to touch 
the earth or iron, will allay pains in the bowels, if applied to 
the body, and kept close to it by the clothes and girdle. The 
common people, as already^^ stated, look upon this tree as ill- 
omened, because it bears no fruit, and is never propagated 
from seed. 
CHAP. 42. THE BRYA I TWENTY-NINE EEMEDIES. 
At Corinth, and in the vicinity of that city, the Greeks give 
the name of brya"^* to a plant of which there are two 
varieties ; the wild brya,^^ which is altogether barren, and the 
cultivated one.^^ This last, when found in Syria and Egypt, 
produces a ligneous fruit, somewhat larger than a gall-nut, in 
great abundance, and of an acrid flavour ; medical men emplo}^ 
it as a substitute for galls in the compositions known as 
antherse."^^ The wood also, with the blossoms, leaves, and 
bark of the tree, is used for similar purpose's, but their pro- 
perties are not so strongly developed. The bark is pounded 
also, and given for^^ discharges of blood from the mouth, irre- 
gularities of the catamenia, and coeliac affections : beaten up 
and applied to the part affected, it checks the increase of all 
kinds of abscesses. 
The juice too is extracted from the leaves for similar pur- 
poses, and a decoction is made of them in wine ; they are ap- 
plied also to gangrenes, in combination with honey. A de- 
coction -of them taken in wine, or the leaves themselves ap- 
plied with oil of roses and wax, has a sedative effect : it is in 
this form that th^y are used for the cure of epinyctis. This 
decoction is useful also for tooth-ache or ear-ache, and the root 
^2 " Gr3.vis." He does not, however, show his gravity in the present in- 
stance. In B, xvi. c. 45. 
See B. xiii. c. 37. 
^5 Identified by Fee with the Tamarix Gallica. 
^' The '*brya," spoken of in B. xiii. c. 37, as growing in Achaia also, 
tlie Tamarix orientalis of Delille. But there he implies that it does not 
produce any fruit when it grows in Egypt. 
Flower compositions." 
It may possibly be of some use for this purpose, being of an astrin- 
gent nature. 
