COMMENTARY. It is unquestionably the _Ceratonia Siliqua_, L., or _Carob-tree_. We have given some account of it among the articles of food in Book I. All the other authorities on the Materia Medica give it nearly the same characters as our author. The writer who is fullest on this head is Avicenna, who treats of it under the name of _Carob_, i. e. _Siliqua_. (ii, 2, 193.) See also Serapion (c. 135), and Rhases (Cont. l. ult. i, 366.) Our modern herbalists treat of it in nearly the same terms as the ancients. See Parkinson (236.) It is still used on the Continent and in Asia as an inferior article of food, and holds a place in the modern Greek Pharmacopœia. Κεφαλαὶ, Capita, _Heads_; those of pickled herrings, when burnt, acquire a desiccative power without being very acrid. They therefore relieve fissures about the anus, and chronic cases of indurated uvula. The entire head of the anchovy (_smaris_), when burnt, is useful in alopecia when applied with bear’s grease. The burnt head of a mouse when applied with honey does the same thing. The dried head of the kite without its feathers, when drunk in water to as great an amount as can be lifted with three fingers, relieves gouty affections. They say that the head of a lizard extracts sharp-pointed things, and removes myrmecia, acrochordon, and clavus. * * * * * COMMENTARY. Our author’s account of the medicinal properties of _Heads_ is taken from Galen. See also Aëtius and Serapion. Dioscorides treats of the different articles separately, and not under a general head like Galen and his successors. (See ii, 31, 32, &c.) The Arabians merely copy from Dioscorides and Galen, especially the latter. See in particular Serapion (c. 571.) Κηκὶς, Galla, _Gall_; that sort called Omphacitis is a very sour medicine, and hence it proves desiccant, repels defluxions, contracts and astringes relaxed and debilitated parts. It agrees also with all cases of defluxion. It is to be placed in the third rank of desiccants, and the second of refrigerants. The other sort, which is yellow, porous, and large, is desiccant indeed, but less so than the other, inasmuch as it is deficient in astringency. In a decoction it relieves inflammations of the fundament and prolapsus ani when burnt. Extinguished in vinegar they become styptic. * * * * *