These plants are good for stings inflicted by scorpions, and are useful as an application, mixed with dates or quinces, for maladies of the liver: a decoction of them with barley-meal is used for the kidneys and the bladder. A decoction of them in water is used also for jaundice and for strangury. The kind last mentioned, in combination with honey, is good for wounds inflicted by serpents, and a pessary is made of it, with honey, as a detergent for the uterus. Taken in drink it brings away coagulated blood, and rubbed upon the body it acts as a sudorific: it is particularly useful also for the kidneys. Pills of a purgative nature are made of it for dropsy, with figs.[88] Taken in wine, in doses of one victoriatus,[89] it dispels lumbago, and cures coughs that are not of an inveterate description. A decoction of it in vinegar, taken in drink, will instantaneously bring away the dead fœtus, it is said. CHAP. 21.—THE PITYUSA: SIX REMEDIES. For a similar[90] reason, too, we shall accord the same distinction to the pityusa, a plant which some persons reckon among the varieties of the tithymalus.[91] It is a shrub,[92] resembling the pitch-tree in appearance, and with a diminutive purple blossom. A decoction of the root, taken in doses of one hemina, carries off the bilious and pituitous secretions by[93] stool, and a spoonful of the seed, used as a suppository, has a similar effect. A decoction of the leaves in vinegar removes scaly eruptions of the skin; and in combination with boiled rue, it effects the cure of diseases of the mamillæ, gripings in the bowels, wounds inflicted by serpents, and incipient gatherings of most kinds. CHAP. 22.—RESINS: TWENTY-TWO REMEDIES. In treating, first of wines,[94] and then of trees,[95] we have stated that resin is the produce of the trees above-mentioned, and have described the several varieties of it, and the countries in which they are respectively produced. There are two principal kinds of resin, the dry and the liquid.[96] The dry resins are extracted from the pine[97] and the pitch-tree,[98] the liquid from the terebinth,[99] the larch,[100] the lentisk,[101] and the cypress;[102] these last producing it in the province of Asia and in Syria. It is an error[103] to suppose that the resin of the pitch-tree is the same as that of the larch; for the pitch-tree yields an unctuous[104] resin, and of the same consistency as frankincense, while that of the larch is thin, like honey in colour, and of a powerful odour. It is but very rarely that medical men make use of liquid resin, and when they do, it is mostly that produced by the larch, which is administered in an egg for cough and ulcerations of the viscera. The resin of the pine, too, is far from extensively used, and that of the other kinds is always boiled[105] before use: on the various methods of boiling it, we have enlarged at sufficient length already.[106]