Hippocrates, De ulceribus
Charles Darwin Adams, Ed.

---

Part 9

If you wish to use a liquid application, the medicine called caricum may be rubbed in, and the bandages may be applied as formerly described upon the same principle. The medicine is prepared of the following ingredients:-Of black hellebore, of [p. 340]sandarach, of the flakes of copper, of lead washed, with much sulphur, arsenic, and cantharides. This may be compounded so as may be judged most proper, and it is to be diluted with oil of juniper. When enough has been rubbed in, lay aside the medicine, and apply boiled wakerobin in a soft state, either rubbing it in dry, or moistening it with honey. But if you use the caricum in a dry state, you must abstain from these things, and sprinkle the medicine on the sore. The powder from hellebore and sandarach alone answers. Another liquid medicine:-The herb, the leaf of which resembles the arum (wakerobin) in nature, but is white, downy, of the size of the ivy-leaf: this herb is applied with wine, or the substance which forms upon the branches of the ilex, when pounded with wine, is to be applied. Another:-The juice of the grape, the strongest vinegar, the flower of copper, natron, the juice of the wild fig-tree. Alum, the most finely levigated, is to be put into the juice of the wild grape, and it is to be put into a red bronze mortar and stirred in the sun, and removed when it appears to have attained proper consistence.