The seven books of Paulus Ægineta, volume 1 (of 3) : $b translated from the Greek: with a commentary embracing a complete view of the knowledge possessed by the Greeks, Romans, and Arabians on all subjects connected with medicine and surgeryPaulus, Aegineta
History
The seven books of Paulus Ægineta, volume 1 (of 3) : $b translated from the Greek: with a commentary embracing a complete view of the knowledge possessed by the Greeks, Romans, and Arabians on all subjects connected with medicine and surgery
Paulus, Aegineta
Medicine; Medicine, Arab; Medicine, Greek and Roman
Haly Abbas likewise states that wheat is the most nutritious of all
articles of food. Pliny asserts the same thing of it. He calls the siligo
the _deliciæ tritici_. Galen explains the siligo and similago in much the
same terms as our author. The third species, or the autopyrus, he says,
consists of all the parts of the grain, the bran not being excluded.
Actuarius, on the other hand, says that the bran only is rejected. Is
not the text of the latter corrupt? Bran, Galen adds, is detergent,
and contains little nourishment. Modern commentators have been greatly
puzzled to determine what the _siligo_, _similago_, and _autopyrus_ of
the ancients were. It appears impossible to reconcile all the different
descriptions of them given by ancient writers, and therefore we cannot
but suspect that some of them must have written from an imperfect
acquaintance with the subject. Upon the whole, we are inclined to think
that we shall not be far from the truth if we set them down as varieties
of flour or bread, as regards quality, corresponding in a great measure,
to the kinds of bread now distinguished by the names of the white, the
wheaten, and the household. At all events the _autopyrus_ is certainly
analogous to the last. The furfuraceus, or panis cibarius of Celsus, was
made solely from bran.
Theophrastus mentions that the lightest wheat imported to Greece in his
time was the Pontic. It is curious to remark that Odessa wheat still
retains its ancient character. The heaviest, he says, was the Sicilian,
which, however, was lighter than the Bœotian. Pliny says that the
lightest wheat brought to the Roman market was the Gallic, and then that
imported from the Chersonese. The first in excellence, he adds, are the
Bœotian, the Sicilian, and next to these the African.
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