previous next

CHAP. 43.—THE CHRYSOLACHANUM; TWO VARIETIES OF IT: THREE REMEDIES. COAGULUM: TERAÆ: TWO REMEDIES.

The chrysolachanum1 grows in pine plantations, and is similar to the lettuce in appearance. It heals wounds of the sinews, if applied without delay. There is another kind2 of chrysolachanum mentioned, with a golden flower, and a leaf like that of the cabbage: it is boiled and eaten as a laxative vegetable. This plant, worn as an amulet by a patient suffering from jaundice, provided it be always kept in sight, is a cure for that disease, it is said. I art not certain whether this is all that might be said about the chrysolachanum, but, at all events, it is all that I have found respecting it; for it is a very general fault on the part of our more recent herbalists, to confine their account of plants to the mere name, with a very meagre description of the peculiar features of the plant, —just as though, forsooth, they were universally known. Thus, they tell us, for instance, that a plant known as "coagulum3 terræ," acts astringently upon the bowels, and that it dispels strangury, taken in water or in wine.

1 "Golden vegetable." Supposed to be identical with the Atriplex of B. xx. c. 38, our Orage.

2 Cultivated orage, probably.

3 "Earth rennet." This plant has not been identified. Lobelius has made a guess at the Serapias abortiva of Linnæus, the Helleborine. It is pretty clear that it was unknown to Pliny himself.

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.

hide Places (automatically extracted)

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

hide References (2 total)
  • Cross-references in general dictionaries to this page (2):
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: