36 
pliny's natueal histoky. 
[Book XXIV. 
mighty power of Nature/^ which in our successive Books we 
have described, is more fully displayed than in this. The 
root of the reed, pounded and applied to the part affected, 
extracts the prickles of fern from the body, the root of the 
fern having a similar effect upon splinters of the reed. Among 
the numerous varieties which we have described, the scented 
reed^^ which is grown in Judaea and Syria as an ingredient in 
our unguents, boiled with hay- grass or parsley- seed, has a 
diuretic effect : employed as a pessary, it acts as an emmena- 
gogue. Taken in drink, in doses of two oboli, it is curative 
of convulsions, diseases of the liver and kidneys, and dropsy. 
Used as a fumigation, and with resin more particularly, it is 
good for coughs, and a decoction of it with myrrh is useful for 
scaly eruptions and running ulcers. A juice, too, is collected 
from it which has similar properties to those of elaterium.-^* 
In every kind of reed the part that is the most efficacious is 
that which lies nearest the root ; the joints also are efficacious 
in a high degree. The ashes of the Cyprian reed known as 
the ''donax,"^^ are curative of alopecy and putrid ulcers. 
The leaves of it are also used for the extractions^ of pointed 
bodies from the flesh, and for erysipelas and all kinds of 
gatherings. The common reed, beaten up quite fresh, has 
also considerable extractive powers, and not in the root only, 
for the stem, it is said, has a similar property. The root is 
used also in vinegar as a topical application for sprains and 
for pains in the spine ; and beaten up fresh and taken in wine it 
acts as an aphrodisiac. The down that grows on reeds, put 
into the ears, deadens the hearing. 
CHAP, 51. THE PAPYEUS, AND THE PAPER MADE FEOM IT: 
THREE REMEDIES. 
Of a kindred nature with the reed is the papyrus of 
Egypt ; a plant that is remarkably useful, in a dried state, for 
1^ Sympathies and antipathies existing in plants. Seec. 1 of this Book. 
Not a reed, Fee thinks, but some other monocotyledon that has not 
been identified. See B. xii. c. 48. 
See B. XX. c. 3. See B. xvi. c. 66. 
Celsus also speaks of the root of the reed as being efficacious for this 
purpose, B. v. c. 26. 
Fee says that neither of these last assertions is true. 
See B. xiii. c. 21. It is no longer used in medicine. 
