Pliny the Elder, The Natural History, BOOK XXVI. A CONTINUATION OF THE REMEDIES DERIVED FROM PLANTS, CLASSIFIED ACCORDING TO PARTICULAR DISEASES., CHAP. 71.

Home Collections/Texts Perseus Catalog Research Grants Open Source About Help

Hide browse bar Your current position in the text is marked in blue. Click anywhere in the line to jump to another position:

This text is part of:

Greek and Roman Materials

Search the Perseus Catalog for:

View text chunked by:

book : chapter

CHAP. 71.—REMEDIES FOR FEVERS.

Agaric, taken in warm water, alleviates cold fevers: sideritis, in combination with oil, is good for tertian fevers; bruised ladanum¹ also, which is found in corn fields; plantago,² taken in doses of two drachmæ, in hydromel, a couple of hours before the paroxysms come on; juice of the root of plantago made warm or subjected to pressure; or else the root itself beaten up in water made warm with a hot iron. Some medical men prescribe three roots of plantago, in three cyathi of water; and in a similar manner, four roots for quartan fevers. When buglossos³ is beginning to wither, if a person takes the pith out of the stem, and says while so doing, that it is for the cure of such and such a person suffering from fever, and then attaches seven leaves to the patient, just before the paroxysms come on, he will experience a cure, they say.

Fevers too, those which are attended with recurrent cold shiverings more particularly, are cured by administering one drachma of betony, or else agaric, in three cyathi of hydromel. Some medical men recommend three leaves of cinquefoil for tertian, four for quartan, and an increased number for other fevers; while others again prescribe in all cases three oboli of cinquefoil, with pepper, in hydromel.

Vervain, administered in water, is curative of fever, in beasts of burden even; but care must be taken, in cases of tertian fever, to cut the plant at the third joint, and of quartan fever at the fourth. The seed of either kind of hypericons⁴ is taken also for quartan fevers and cold shiverings. Powdered betony modifies these fits, and panaces⁵ is of so warming a nature that persons when about to travel amid the snow are recommended to drink an infusion of it, and to rub the body all over with the plant. Aristolochia⁶ also arrests shivering produced by cold.

1 See c. 30 of this Book.

2 See B. xxv. c. 39.

3 See B. xxv. c. 40.

4 See Chapters 53 and 64 of this Book.

5 See B. xxv. c. 11, et seq.

6 See B. xxv. c. 54.

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.

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.

Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar:

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

This text is part of:

Search the Perseus Catalog for:

View text chunked by:

Table of Contents:

CHAP. 71.—REMEDIES FOR FEVERS.

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

This text is part of:

Search the Perseus Catalog for:

View text chunked by:

Table of Contents:

CHAP. 71.—REMEDIES FOR FEVERS.

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