Milium, _Millet_, is cooling in the first degree, and desiccant in the second. It also, to a certain degree, consists of subtile particles. When used then for a fomentation in small bags, and in the form of a cataplasm, it is of a desiccant nature. * * * * * COMMENTARY. Dierbach inclines to the _Holcus Sorghum_, a species of millet called _Sorgo_ or _Guinea corn_. Most of the other authorities refer it to the _Panicum Italicum_. (See Sprengel, Schneider, and Parkinson.) We have treated of it among the articles of food in Book I. As a medicine, it is principally in the form of a fomentation that it is prescribed by Dioscorides and the other authorities. Galen does not speak very favorably of the cataplasm prepared from it. The Arabians treat of it in much the same terms as the Greeks. See Rhases (Cont. l. ult. i, 532), Avicenna (ii, 2, 288), and Serapion (c. 102.) They all speak of it as being a very inferior article of food; and as a medicine, recommend it only in a fomentation. It was retained in our English Dispensatory down to a late date. See Quincy. To this day it is much prized by the native practitioners of Hindostan. See Ainslie (Mat. Ind. 124.) Κέδρος, Cedrus, _Cedar_ (?), or _Juniper_; the shrub, which resembles juniper, and the tree are calefacient and desiccative in the third degree; but the oil prepared from them, which they call cedræa, touches upon the fourth, being composed of sufficiently subtile particles. It therefore corrodes soft flesh readily, and without pain; and the hard flesh, more particularly of dead bodies, it dries and preserves from putrefaction. It kills lice, nits, ascarides, worms in the ears, and has many other powers. * * * * * COMMENTARY. Dioscorides describes two species, the larger being probably the _Juniperus Phœnicea_, and the smaller the _Juniperus communis_. The ἄρκευθος was a species of the same genus. Pliny calls the pitch of the tree by the name of _Cedria_, and the oil by that of _Pisselæon_. Is the cedria the gum vernix, called sandarax by the Arabians? We will discuss this question in the Appendix to this Book, when we come to treat of the substances introduced into the Materia Medica by the Arabians. Dioscorides says of the fruit of the cedar or juniper, that it is calefacient and bad for the stomach, that it is useful in coughs, as an emmenagogue, and alexipharmic. (i, 105.) Galen says the fruit is edible, but apt to occasion headache and pain of the stomach. (De Simpl. vii.) The Arabians treat fully of it. See Avicenna (ii, 2, 160, 668.) He and the other Arabians borrow nearly all their information from the Greeks. Even Ebn Baithar contains little that is original under this head. (ii, 94.) We observe, by the way, that his translator, Dr. Sontheimer, marks it as the _Pinus Cedrus_, but this it clearly cannot be. Κεντάυριον,