Chap. 47.] 
THE IVY, 
33 
head, and the mouth is fomented with a decoction of them, with 
which the head is rubbed as well. They are useful also for 
the spleen, the leaves being applied topically, or an infusion 
of them taken in drink. A decoction of them is used for 
cold shiverings in fevers, and for pituitous eruptions ; or else 
they are beaten up in wine for the purpose. The umbels too, 
taken in drink or applied externally, are good for affections of 
the spleen, and an application of them is useful for the liver ; 
employed as a pessary, they act as an emmenagogue. 
The juice of the ivy, the white cultivated kind more par- 
ticularly, cures diseases of the nostrils and removes habitually 
offensive smells. Injected into the nostrils it purges the head, 
and with the addition of nitre it is still more efl&cacious for that 
purpose. In combination with oil, the juice is injected for 
suppurations or pains in the ears. It is a corrective also of the 
deformities of scars. The juice of white ivy, heated with the 
aid of iron, is still more efficacious for affections of the spleen; 
it will be found sufficient, however, to take six of the berries in 
two cyathi of wine. Three berries of the white ivy, taken in 
oxymel, expel tape-worm, and in the treatment of such cases 
it is a good plan to apply them to the abdomen as well. 
Erasistratus prescribes twenty of the golden-coloured berries of 
the ivy which we have-mentioned as the chrysocarpos,"^® to be 
beaten up in one sextarius of wine, and he says that if three 
cyathi of this preparation are taken for dropsy, it will carry off 
by urine the water that has been secreted beneath the skin. 
For cases of tooth- ache he recommends five berries of the 
chrysocarpos to be beaten up in oil of roses, and warmed in a 
pomegranate-rind, and then injected into the ear opposite the 
side affected. The berries which yield a juice of a saffron 
colour, taken beforehand in drink, are a preservative against 
crapulence ; they are curative also of spitting of blood and of 
griping pains in the bowels. The whiter umbels of the black 
ivy, taken in drink, are productive of sterility, in males even. 
A decoction in wine of any kind of ivy is useful as a liniment 
for all sorts of ulcers, those even of the malignant kind known 
as " cacoethes." The tears^^ which distil from the ivy are used 
98 " Golden fruit/' See B. xvi. c. 62. 
99 The same substance which he speaks of at the end of this Chapter as 
the gum of ivy, called " hederine," Fee says, in modem chemistry. It 
is a gum resin, mixed with ligneous particles. 
VOL. Y. D 
