previous next

CHAP. 11. (4.)—TURNIPS; THOSE KNOWN AS BUNION AND BUNIAS: FIVE REMEDIES.

The Greeks distinguish two kinds of turnips,1 also, as em- ployed in medicine. The turnip with angular stalks and a flower like that of anise, and known by them as "bunion,"2 is good for promoting the menstrual discharge in females and for affections3 of the bladder; it acts, also, as a diuretic. For these purposes, a decoction of it is taken with hydromel, or else one drachma of the juice of the plant.4 The seed, parched, and then beaten up, and taken in warm water, in doses of four cyathi, is a good remedy for dysentery; it will stop the passage of the urine, however, if linseed is not taken with it.

The other kind of turnip is known by the name of "bunias,"5 and bears a considerable resemblance to the radish and the rape united, the seed of it enjoying the reputation of being a remedy for poisons; hence it is that we find it employed in antidotes.

1 See B. xviii. c. 35, and B. xix. c. 25.

2 Dalechamps remarks that Pliny here: confounds the bunion with the bunias; the first of which, as Fée says, is an umbellifera, either the Bunium bulbocastanum of Linnæus, or the Pencedanum silaus of Linnæus, and the second is the Brassica napo-brassica of Linnæus. Dioscorides says that the stalks of the bunion are quadrangular. M. Fraas thinks that the bunion is the Bunium pumilum of modern Botany, and says that the Bunium bulbocastanum, usually supposed to be the bunion of Dioscorides, is a stranger to Greece.

3 These properties, Fée says, are not to be found in the Bunium bulbocastanum of modern botanists.

4 Sillig is of opinion that there is an hiatus here in the text, and that the meaning is that a drachma of the juice is taken with something else: honey possibly, he suggests.

5 The Brassica napo-brassica of Linnæus.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

load focus Latin (Karl Friedrich Theodor Mayhoff, 1906)
hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

hide References (4 total)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: