48 
PLINT's KA.TUEAL HISTOKT. 
[Book XXIY. 
uterus, diseases of the rectum, and coeliac affections. The leaves, 
chewed, are good for diseases of the mouth, and a topical ap- 
plication is made of them for running ulcers and other maladies 
of the head. In the cardiac disease they are similarly applied 
to the left breast by themselves. They are applied topically 
also for pains in the stomach and for procidence of the eyes. 
The juice of them is used as an injection for the ears, and, in 
combination with cerate of roses, it heals condylomata. 
A decoction of the young shoots in wine is an instantaneous 
remedy for diseases of the uvula ; and eaten by themselves 
like cymse,^ or boiled in astringent wine, they strengthen 
loose teeth. They arrest fluxes of the bowels also, and dis- 
charges of blood, and are very useful for dysentery. Dried in 
the shade and then burnt, the ashes of them are curative of 
procidence of the uvula. The leaves too, dried and pounded, 
are very useful, it is said, for ulcers upon beasts of burden. The 
berries produced by this plant would seem to furnish a stomatice^^ 
superior even to that prepared from the cultivated mulberry. 
Under this form, or else only with hypocisthis^^* and honey, 
the berries are administered for cholera, the cardiac disease, 
and wounds inflicted by spiders.^^ 
Among the medicaments known as styptics,"^-* there is 
none that is more efficacious than a decoction of the root of the 
bramble in wine, boiled down to one third. Ulcerations of the 
mouth and rectum are bathed with it, and fomentations of it 
are used for a similar purpose ; indeed, it is so remarkably 
powerful in its effects, that the very sponges which are used 
become as hard as a stone. 
CHAP. 74. THE CYNOSBATOS: THEEE EEMEDIES. 
There is another kind of bramble also,^"* which bears a rose. 
It produces a round excrescence,^^ similar to a chesnut in 
^0 .Cabbage-sprouts. See B. xix. c. 41. 
^1 Or " mouth-medicine." See B. xxiii. c. 71. 
See B. xxvi. cc. 31, 49, 87, and 90. 
^'^ The spider called phalangium " is meant, Fee says. See B. xi. c. 28. 
Astringents. *'Lapidescunt.'' 
9^ The eglantine. See B. xvi. c. 71. 
9^ He alludes to " bedeguar," a fungous excrescence found on the wild 
rose-tree, and produced by the insect known as the Cynips roste. It is 
somewhat rough on the exterior, like the outer coat of the chesnut. 
