Pliny the Elder, The Natural History, BOOK XXII. THE PROPERTIES OF PLANTS AND FRUITS., CHAP. 68.

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CHAP. 68.—BREAD: TWENTY-ONE REMEDIES.

Bread,¹ too, which forms our ordinary nutriment, possesses medicinal properties, almost without, number. Applied with water and oil, or else rose-oil, it softens abscesses; and, with hydromel, it is remarkably soothing for indurations. It is prescribed with wine to produce delitescence, or when a defluxion requires to be checked; or, if additional activity is required, with vinegar. It is employed also for the morbid defluxions of rheum, known to the Greeks as "rheumatismi," and for bruises and sprains. For all these purposes, however, bread made with leaven, and known as "autopyrus,"² is the best.

It is applied also to whitlows, in vinegar, and to callosities of the feet. Stale bread, or sailors'-bread,³ beaten up and baked again, arrests looseness of the bowels. For persons who wish to improve the voice, dry bread is very good, taken fasting; it is useful also as a preservative against catarrhs. The bread called "sitanius," and which is made of three-month⁴ wheat, applied with honey, is a very efficient cure for contusions of the face and scaly eruptions. White bread, steeped in hot or cold water, furnishes a very light and wholesome aliment for patients. Soaked in wine, it is applied as a poultice for swellings of the eyes, and used in a similar manner, or with the addition of dried myrtle, it is good for pustules on the head. Persons troubled with palsy are recommended to take bread soaked in water, fasting, immediately after the bath. Burnt bread modifies the close smell of bedrooms, and, used in the strainers,⁵ it neutralizes bad odours in wine.

1 Bread, as made at the present day, is but little used in modern medicine, beyond being the basis of many kinds of poultices. A decoction of bread with laudanum, is known in medicine, Fée says, as the "white decoction."

2 "Unseparated from the bran."

3 Probably like the military bread, made of the coarsest meal, and un- fermented.

4 See B. xviii. c. 12.

5 "Sacos." See B. xiv. c. 28.

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. 68.—BREAD: TWENTY-ONE 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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Table of Contents:

CHAP. 68.—BREAD: TWENTY-ONE REMEDIES.

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