previous next

CHAP. 3. (4.)—-ÆTHIOPIS: FOUR REMEDIES.

Æthiopis1 is a plant with leaves resembling those of phlomos,2 large, numerous, hairy, and springing from the root. The stem is square, rough, similar to that of arction3 in appearance, and with numerous axillary concavities. The seed resembles that of the fitch, being white and twofold; the roots are several in number, long, fleshy, soft, and of a viscous taste; when dry they turn black and hard, and might easily be taken for horns. In addition to Æthiopia, this plant grows upon Mount Ida in Troas, and in Messenia. The roots are gathered in autumn, and left to dry for some days in the sun, to prevent them from turning mouldy. Taken in white wine they are curative of affections of the uterus, and a decoction of them is administered for sciatica, pleurisy, and eruptions of the throat. The kind, however, which comes from Æthiopia, is by far the best, and gives instantaneous relief.

1 Generally identified with the Salvia argentea of Linnæus, Silver sage, or else with the Salvia Æthiopis, Woolly sage. It must not be confounded with the plant of the same name mentioned in B. xxiv. c. 102.

2 See B. xxv. c. 73.

3 See c. 16 of this Book.

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