The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 4 (of 6)Pliny, the Elder
History
The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 4 (of 6)
Pliny, the Elder
Natural history -- Pre-Linnean works
Taken in food, too, it is wholesome, whether eaten raw or
boiled, or used as a confection; boiled with hyssop, and taken with
wine, it is good for gripings of the stomach. Employed in the same way,
it arrests internal hæmorrhage, and, applied to the nostrils, bleeding
at the nose: it is beneficial also to the teeth if rinsed with it. In
cases of ear-ache, this juice is injected into the ears, care being
taken to moderate the dose, as already stated, if wild rue is employed.
For hardness of hearing, too, and singing in the ears, it is similarly
employed in combination with oil of roses, or oil of laurel, or else
cummin and honey.
Juice of rue pounded in vinegar, is applied also to the temples and the
region of the brain in persons affected with phrenitis; some persons,
however, have added to this mixture wild thyme and laurel leaves,
rubbing the head and neck as well with the liniment. It has been given
in vinegar to lethargic patients to smell at, and a decoction of it is
administered for epilepsy, in doses of four cyathi, as also just before
the attacks in fever of intolerable chills. It is likewise given raw to
persons for shivering fits. Rue is a provocative[1547] of the urine to
bleeding even: it promotes the menstrual discharge, also, and brings
away the after-birth, as well as the dead fœtus even, according to
Hippocrates,[1548] if taken in sweet red wine. The same author, also,
recommends applications of it, as well as fumigations, for affections
of the uterus.
For cardiac diseases, Diocles prescribes applications of rue, in
combination with vinegar, honey, and barley-meal: and for the iliac
passion, he says that it should be mixed with meal, boiled in oil, and
spread upon the wool of a sheep’s fleece. Many persons recommend, for
purulent expectorations, two drachmæ of dried rue to one and a half of
sulphur; and, for spitting of blood, a decoction of three sprigs in
wine. It is given also in dysentery, with cheese, the rue being first
beaten up in wine; and it has been prescribed, pounded with bitumen, as
a potion for habitual shortness of breath. For persons suffering from
violent falls, three ounces of the seed is recommended. A pound of oil,
in which rue leaves have been boiled, added to one sextarius of wine,
forms a liniment for parts of the body which are frost-bitten. If rue
really is a diuretic, as Hippocrates[1549] thinks, it is a singular
thing that some persons should give it, as being an anti-diuretic, for
the suppression of incontinence of urine.
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