46 
PLINY*8 NATURAL HISTORY. 
[Book XXIV. 
CHAP. 70. THE THORN CALLED A.PPENDIX : TWO REMEDIES. 
THE PYRACANTHA I ONE REMEDY. 
There is a thorn also known as the appendix that name 
being given to the red berries which hang from its branches. 
These berries eaten by themselves, raw, or else dried and 
boiled in wine, arrest looseness of the bowels and dispel 
griping pains in the stomach. The berries of the pyracantha^^ 
are taken in drink for wounds inflicted by serpents. 
CHAP, 71. THE PALIITRUS : TEN REMEDIES. 
The paliurus,*^^ too, is a kind of thorn. The seed of it, known 
by the people of Africa as zura," is extremely efficacious for 
the sting of the scorpion, as also for urinary calculi and cough. 
The leaves are of an astringent nature, and the root disperses 
inflamed tumours, gatherings, and abscissses; taken in drink 
it is diuretic in its effects. A decoction of it in wine arrests 
diarrhoea, and neutralizes the venom of serpents : the root 
more particularly is administered in wine. 
CHAP. 72. THE AGRIFOLIA. THE AQUIFOLIA I ONE REMEDY. 
THE YEW : ONE PROPERTY BELONGING TO IT. 
The agrifolia,"^^ pounded, with the addition of salt, is good 
for diseasQs of the joints, and the berries are used in cases of 
excessive menstruation, coeliac affections, dysentery, and 
cholera ; taken in wine, they act astringently upon the bowels, 
A decoction of the root, applied externally, extracts foreign 
bodies from the flesh, and is remarkably useful for sprains and 
tumours. 
The tree called aquifolia," planted^^ in a town or country- 
The Berberis vulgaris of Linnaeus, or barberry, Fee thinks. 
"^"^ Identified by Fee with the Mespilus pyracantha of Linnaeus, the 
evergreen thora. It receives its name probably from the redness of its 
berries, which are the colour of fire. 
Fee considers this to be the Paliurus aculeatus of DecandoUe, and not 
identical with the Paliurus mentioned in B. xiii. c. 33. 
'^^ Fee thinks that the copyists have made a mistake in this passage, and 
that the reading should be " aquifolia," the same plant that is mentioned 
afterwards under that name. He identifies them with the Ilex aquifolium, 
or holly. See B. xvi. cc. 8, 12, where Pliny evidently confounds the holm 
oak with the holly. 
Dioscorides says, B. i. c. 119, "the branches of the rhamnus^ it is 
said, placed at the doors and windows, wiU avert the spells of sorcerers." 
