Pliny the Elder, The Natural History, BOOK XX. REMEDIES DERIVED FROM THE GARDEN PLANTS., CHAP. 55.

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CHAP. 55.—WILD PENNYROYAL: SEVENTEEN REMEDIES.

For all the purposes already mentioned, wild pennyroyal¹ has exactly the same properties, but in a still higher degree. It bears a strong resemblance to wild marjoram,² and has a smaller leaf than the cultivated kind: by some persons it is known as "dictamnos."³ When browsed upon by sheep and goats, it makes them bleat, for which reason, some of the Greeks, changing a single letter in its name, have called it "blechon,"⁴ [instead of "glechon."]

This plant is naturally so heating as to blister the parts of the body to which it is applied. For a cough which results from a chill, it is a good plan for the patient to rub himself with it before taking the bath; it is similarly employed, too, in shivering fits, just before the attacks come on, and for convulsions and gripings of the stomach. It is also remarkably good for the gout.

To persons afflicted with spasms, this plant is administered in drink, in combination with honey and salt; and it renders expectoration easy in affections of the lungs.⁵ Taken with salt it is beneficial for the spleen and bladder, and is curative of asthma and flatulency. A decoction of it is equally as good as the juice: it restores the uterus when displaced, and is prescribed for the sting of either the land or the sea scolopen- dra, as well as the scorpion. It is particularly good, too, for bites inflicted by a human being. The root of it, newly taken up, is extremely efficacious for corroding ulcers, and in a dried state tends to efface the deformities produced by scars.

1 It differs in no respect whatever from the cultivated kind, except that the leaves of the latter are somewhat larger.

2 Or origanum.

3 Whence our name "dittany."

4 The "bleating plant;" from βληχάομαι, "to bleat." Dioscorides, B. ii. c. 36, says the same of cultivated pennyroyal.

5 "Pulmonum vitia exscreabilia facit."

The Natural History. Pliny the Elder. John Bostock, M.D., F.R.S. H.T. Riley, Esq., B.A. London. Taylor and Francis, Red Lion Court, Fleet Street. 1855.

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Pliny the Elder, The Natural History
John Bostock, M.D., F.R.S., H.T. Riley, Esq., B.A., Ed.

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CHAP. 55.—WILD PENNYROYAL: SEVENTEEN REMEDIES.

Pliny the Elder, The Natural History John Bostock, M.D., F.R.S., H.T. Riley, Esq., B.A., Ed.

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CHAP. 55.—WILD PENNYROYAL: SEVENTEEN REMEDIES.

Pliny the Elder, The Natural History
John Bostock, M.D., F.R.S., H.T. Riley, Esq., B.A., Ed.