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CHAP. 58.—THE VARIOUS KINDS OF MEAL: TWENTY-EIGHT REMEDIES.

Barley1-meal, raw or boiled, disperses, softens, or ripens gatherings and inflammatory tumours; and for other purposes a decoction of it is made in hydromel, or with dried figs. If required for pains in the liver, it must be boiled with oxycrate in wine. When it is a matter of doubt whether an abscess should be made to suppurate or be dispersed, it is a better plan to boil the meal in vinegar, or lees of vinegar, or else with a decoction of quinces or pears. For the bite of the millepede,2 it is employed with honey, and for the stings of serpents, and to prevent suppurations, with vinegar. To promote suppuration, it should be used with oxycrate, with the addition of Gallic resin. For gatherings, also, that have come to a head, and ulcers of long standing, it must be employed in combination with resin, and for indurations, with pigeons' dung, dried figs, or ashes. For inflammation of the tendons, or of the intestines and sides, or for pains in the male organs and denudations of the bones, it is used with poppies, or melilote; and for scrofulous sores, it is used with pitch and oil, mixed with the urine of a youth who has not reached the years of puberty. It is employed also with fenugreek for tumours of the thoracic organs, and in fevers, with honey, or stale grease.

For suppurations, however, wheat-meal is much more sooth- ing;3 it is applied topically also for affections of the sinews, mixed with the juice of henbane, and for the cure of freckles, with vinegar and honey. The meal of zea,4 from which, as already5 stated, an alica is made, appears to be more efficacious than that of barley even: but that of the three month6 kind is the most emollient. It is applied warm, in red wine, to the stings of scorpions, as also for affections of the trachea, and spitting of blood: for coughs, it is employed in combination with goat suet or butter.

The meal of fenugreek,7 however, is the most soothing of them all: boiled with wine and nitre, it heals running ulcers, eruptions on the body, and diseases of the feet and mamillæ. The meal of æra8 is more detergent than the other kinds, for inveterate ulcers and gangrenes: in combination with radishes, salt, and vinegar, it heals lichens, and with virgin sulphur, leprosy: for head-ache, it is applied to the forehead with goose-grease. Boiled in wine, with pigeons' dung and linseed, it ripens inflamed tumours and scrofulous sores.

1 See B. xviii. c. 13.

2 Or multipede. For these purposes, as Fée says, it is of no use whatever.

3 It is no better, Fée says, than rye or barley-meal.

4 See B. xviii. cc. 19, 29.

5 In B. xviii. c. 29.

6 "Trimestris." See B. xviii. c. 12.

7 Fée remarks, that this meal is still valued for its maturative properties.

8 Hair-grass, probably, or darnel. See B. xviii. c. 44.

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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