Chap. 91.] 
THE DKACOlSTTItTM. 
57 
with linseed, in astringent wine. The leaves of this plant are 
applied with polenta for defluxions of the eyes, the part 
affected being first covered with a pledget of wet linen. Applied 
to scrofulous sores, they cause them to suppurate, and if some 
axle-grease is then applied, a perfect cure will he effected. 
They are applied also to piles, with green oil, and are good 
for phthisis, in combination with honey. Taken with the 
food, they increase the milk in nursing women, and, rubbed 
upon the heads of infants, they promote the rapid growth of 
the hair. Eaten with vinegar, they act as an aphrodisiac. 
CHAP. 90. THE EGYPTIAJ?" CLEMATIS, DAPHNOIDES, OK POLT- 
GOKOiDES : TWO EEMEDIES. 
There is another kind also, known as the Egyptian^ 
clematis, otherwise as ''daphno'ides'*^^ or ^'polygono'ides:'' it has 
a leaf like that of the laurel, and is long and slender. Taken 
in vinegar, it is very useful for the stings of serpents, that of 
the asp in particular. 
CHAP. 91. (16.) ^DIFFEREJ^T OPINIONS ON THE DEACONTIUM. 
It is Egypt more particularly that produces the clematis 
known as the aron," of which we have already made some 
mention when speaking of the bulbs, Eespecting this plant 
and the dracontium, there have been considerable differences 
of opinion. Some writers, indeed, have maintained that they 
are identical, and Glaucias has made the only distinction 
between them in reference to the place of their growth, 
assuming that the dracontium is nothing else than the aron in 
a wild state. Some persons, again, have called the root aron,' ' 
and the stem of the plant dracontium but if the dracon- 
tium is the same as the one known to us as the dracuncu- 
lus,"^ it is a different plant altogether ; for while the aron has 
a broad, black, rounded root, and considerably larger, — large 
enough, indeed, to fill the hand, — the dracunculus has a 
^2 The Vinca major and Vinca minor of Linnaeus, the greater and smaller 
periwinkle. Fee is at a loss to know why it should be called Egyptian," 
as it is a plant of Europe. 
•^^ " Laurel-shaped " and " many-cornered. 
54 In xix, c. 30. 
^5 Fee says that the Dracontion of the Greeks and the Dracunculus of 
the Latins are identical, being represented in modern Botany by the Arum 
dracunculus of LinnsBus, the common dragon. 
