Fermentum, _Leaven_; it also is composed of opposite ingredients; for it is possessed of a cold acidity and putrefactive (“fermentative?”) heat, and moreover of salts and flour. It is, therefore, heating and discutient in no ordinary degree. * * * * * COMMENTARY. On the ancient modes of preparing Fermentum or Leaven, see ‘Geopon.’ (ii, 31); and Pliny (H. N. xviii, 26.) The kind in most common use was prepared from millet and must, or the fresh juice of the grape. Our author’s description of its medicinal powers is taken from Galen. Aëtius treats of it in nearly the same words. Dioscorides praises the leaven of wheat as being heating and epispastic, and suiting with complaints of the heels, phymata, and furunculi. (ii, 107.) Serapion under this head gives two extracts from Dioscorides and Galen, followed by one from Abenmesuai (the elder Mesue?), who recommends it in the fevers of children for quenching thirst. (De Simpl. 29.) Rhases gives a formula for a draught to be prepared from leaven, which he in like manner praises as being wonderfully efficacious in the fevers of children. (Cont. l. ult. i, 306.) Ζωμὸς, Jusculum, _Broth_, loosens the belly if drunk by itself or with wine, when made from fresh fish; but particularly that which is simply prepared from hakes, scorpion-fishes, rainbows, perches, and other tender fishes which dwell among rocks, with water, oil, dill, and salts. In like manner, also, the broth of the Crustacea, especially of the Tellinæ (limpets), the Chamæ (cockles), and Conchylæ (oysters). The broth of an old cock, boiled with salt to a great degree, is laxative; but that of a hen, on the other hand, is astringent. * * * * * COMMENTARY. The account here given of the broth of fishes is taken from Dioscorides (ii, 35.) Galen directs the broth of fish to be prepared in the following manner: first pour in plenty of water, then add of oil _q. s._ with a little dill and leek; then, when the fish are half boiled, sprinkle a little salt. (De Alim. Facult. iii); (Meth. Med. ix.) Apicius in the tenth chapter of his work, gives fourteen different receipts for preparing soups from fishes. Most of them contain wine, honey, vinegar, and oil, with pepper, lovage, cumin, rue, &c., among the ingredients which enter into their composition. On the fishes mentioned under this head, see Book I (90.) The Arabians generally condense the substance of Dioscorides’s two chapters on Garum and Jus into one, under the title of _Muria_. See Serapion (184), and Avicenna (ii, 2, 486.) Serapion’s Arabian authorities recommend it as a gentle purgative and phlegmagogue in sciatica, both when given by the mouth and in clysters. One of them says of it, that it makes the pustules of smallpox come out, when the eruption is slow in taking place. Ἡδύσμον,