previous next

CHAP. 5.—THE CULTIVATED CUCUMBER: NINE REMEDIES.

Many persons attribute all these properties to the cultivated cucumber1 as well, a plant which even without them would be of very considerable importance, in a medicinal point of view. A pinch of the seed, for instance, in three fingers, beaten up with cummin and taken in wine, is extremely beneficial for a cough: for phrenitis, also, doses of it are administered in woman's milk, and doses of one acetabulum for dysentery. As a remedy for purulent expectorations, it is taken with an equal quantity of cummin;2 and it is used with hydromel for diseases of the liver. Taken in sweet wine, it is a diuretic; and, in combination with cummin,3 it is used as an injection for affections of the kidneys.

1 See B. xix. c. 23. It is but little appreciated for its medicinal properties by the moderns. Emulsions are sometimes made of the seeds, which are of an oily nature. Fée says that the French ladies esteem pommade of cucumber as an excellent cosmetic; which is, however, an erroneous notion.

2 The combination of cummin with cucumber seed is in opposition, Fée remarks, with their medicinal properties, the one being soothing, and the other moderately exciting.

3 The combination of cummin with cucumber seed is in opposition, Fée remarks, with their medicinal properties, the one being soothing, and the other moderately exciting.

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