24 
pliny's FATUEAL HISTOnr. [Book XXIV. 
tender leaves, mixed with polenta, for bites inflicted by dogs. 
The juice of the elder, used as a fomentation, reduces abscesses 
of the brain, and more particularly of the membrane which 
envelopes that organ. The berries, which have not so power- 
ful an action as the other parts of the tree, stain the hair. 
Taken in doses of one acetabulum, in drink, they are diuretic. 
The softer leaves are eaten with oil and salt, to carry off 
pituitous and bilious secretions. 
The smaller kind is for all these purposes the more efficacious 
of the two. A decoction of the root in wine, taken in doses 
of two cyathi, brings away the water in dropsy, and acts 
emolliently upon the uterus : the same effects are produced 
also by a sitting-bath made of a decoction of the leaves. 
The tender shoots of the cultivated kind, boiled in a saucepan 
and eaten as food, have a purgative effect : the leaves taken in 
wine, neutralize the venom of serpents. An application of 
the young shoots, mixed with he-goat suet, is remarkably good 
for gout ; and if they are macerated in water, the infusion will 
destroy fleas. If a decoction of the leaves is sprinkled about 
a place, it will exterminate flies. Boa ''^^ is the name given 
to a malady which appears in the form of red pimples upon 
the body ; for its cure the patient is scourged with a branch of 
elder. The inner bark,^- pounded and taken with white wine, 
relaxes the bowels. 
CHAP. 36. THE JUNIPEE : TWEI^TY-ONE KEMEDIES. 
The juniper is of a warming and resolvent nature beyond 
all other plants : in other respects, it resembles the cedar.^^ 
There are two species of this tree, also, one of which is larger^ 
than the other the odour of either, burnt, repels the ap- 
According to Hardouin, this would appear to be the measles ; but ac- 
cording to Festus, swellings on the legs were so called. The shingles is 
probably the malady meant. 
^2 Fee speaks of a decoction of the inner bark as having been recently 
in vogue for the cure of dropsy. 
53 This so-called cedar, Fee says, is in reality itself a juniper. The medici- 
nal properties of all the varieties of the juniper are not identical. The essen- 
tial oil of the leaves acts with a formidable energy upon the human system. 
^ This is identified by Fee with the Juniper us communis of Lamarck, 
variety a, the Juniperus communis of Linnaeus. 
55 Identified by Fee with the Juniperus nana of Willdenow, the Juni- 
perus communis of Lamarck, variety /3. The Spanish juniper, mentioned 
m B. xvi, c. 76, he identifies with the Juniperus thurit'era of Linnagus. 
