Pliny the Elder, The Natural History, BOOK XXII. THE PROPERTIES OF PLANTS AND FRUITS., CHAP. 72.—THE CHICKPEA AND THE CHICHELING VETCH: TWENTY-THREE REMEDIES.

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CHAP. 72.—THE CHICKPEA AND THE CHICHELING VETCH: TWENTY-THREE REMEDIES.

There is a wild chickpea also, which resembles in its leaf the cultivated kind,¹ and has a powerful smell. Taken in considerable quantities, it relaxes the bowels, and produces griping pains and flatulency; parched, however, it is looked upon as more wholesome. The chicheling vetch,² again, acts more bene- ficially upon the bowels. The meal of both kinds heals running sores of the head—that of the wild sort being the more efficacious of the two—as also epilepsy, swellings of the liver, and stings inflicted by serpents. It acts as an emmenagogue and a diuretic, used in the grain more particularly, and it is a cure for lichens, inflammations of the testes, jaundice, and dropsy. All these kinds, however, exercise an injurious effect upon ulcerations of the bladder and kidneys: but in combination with honey they are very good for gangrenous sores, and the cancer known as "cacoethes." The following is a method adopted for the cure of all kinds of warts: on the first day of the moon, each wart must be touched with a single chickpea, after which, the party must tie up the pease in a linen cloth, and throw it behind him; by adopting this plan, it is thought, the warts will be made to disappear.

Our authors recommend the plant known as the "arietinum"³ to be boiled in water with salt, and two cyathi of the decoction to be taken for strangury. Employed in a similar manner, it expels calculi, and cures jaundice. The water in which the leaves and stalks of this plant have been boiled, applied as a fomentation as hot as possible, allays gout in the feet, an effect equally produced by the plant itself, beaten up and applied warm. A decoction of the columbine⁴ chickpea, it is thought, moderates the shivering fits in tertian or quartan fevers; and the black kind, beaten up with half a nut-gall, and applied with raisin wine, is a cure for ulcers of the eyes.

1 See B. xviii. c. 32. Fée thinks that the wild cicer is identical with our cultivated one, the Cicer rietinum.

2 See B. xviii. cc. 26 and 32.

3 Or "ram's head" cicer; from its fancied resemblance to it: the name is still given to the cultivated plant.

4 Or "pigeon" cicer. See B. xviii. c. 32. Fée thinks it probable that this plant may be a variety of the Ervum.

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. 72.—THE CHICKPEA AND THE CHICHELING VETCH: TWENTY-THREE 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. 72.—THE CHICKPEA AND THE CHICHELING VETCH: TWENTY-THREE REMEDIES.

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