previous next

CHAP. 90.—PSYLLION, CYNOÏDES, CRYSTALLION, SICELICON, OR CYNOMYIA; SIXTEEN REMEDIES. TIRYSELINUM: ONE REMEDY.

Psyllion,1 cynoïdes, crystallion, sicelicon, or cynomyia, has a slender root, of which no use is made, and numerous thin branches, with seeds resembling those of the bean, at the extremities.2 The leaves of it are not unlike a dog's head in shape;3 and the seed, which is enclosed in berries, bears a resemblance to a flea—whence its name "psyllion." This plant is generally found growing in vineyards, is of a cooling nature, and is extremely efficacious as a dispellent. The seed of it is the part made use of; for head-ache, it is applied to the forehead and temples with rose oil and vinegar, or else with oxycrate; it is used as a liniment for other purposes also. Mixed in the proportion of one acetabulum to one sextarius of water, it is left to coagulate and thicken; after which it is beaten up, and the thick solution is used as a liniment for all kinds of pains, abscesses, and inflammations.

Aristolochia is used as a remedy for wounds in the head; it has the property, too, of extracting fractured bones, not only from other parts of the body, but the cranium in particular. The same, too, with plistolochia.

Thryselinum4 is a plant not unlike parsley; the root of it, eaten, carries off pituitous humours from the head.

1 Identified with the Plantago Psyllium of Linnæus, our Fleawort, Fleaseed, or Fleabane.

2 Nothing, Fée says, can be more absurd than this description of the plant.

3 Whence its name "cynoides" and "cynomyia."

4 This plant has not been identified; Wild water-parsley, perhaps a kind of Silm, has been suggested.

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 (1 total)
  • Cross-references in general dictionaries to this page (1):
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: