COMMENTARY. It is the _Allium Cepa_, or onion. Galen, Dioscorides, and Serapion recommend it as an application in cases of alopecia or _Porrigo decalvans_. Dioscorides says that some applied it as a suppository to promote the discharge of blind piles, and he mentions its being introduced into the nose to promote the discharge from it. As a cataplasm with salt, rue, and honey, he recommends it for the bites of rabid dogs. He says it concocts and breaks hard tumours. Upon the whole, Galen, Aëtius, Oribasius, and our author, do little more under this head than abridge the more ample account of it given by Dioscorides. Celsus calls it an aperient of the bowels (ii, 29) and a diuretic (ii, 31.) He recommends it to be chewed in paralysis of the tongue. (iv, 2.) The Arabians treat of it at great length. See Avicenna (ii, 2, 119); Rhases (Cont. l. ult. iii, 18); Serapion (c. 354.) They speak favorably of it as a rubefacient, and all ascribe great powers to it as an alexipharmical medicine. Κύαμος, Faba, _the Bean_, is not far removed from a middle temperament as to cooling and drying. Its flesh is also somewhat detergent. It agrees, therefore, with expectorations from the chest and lungs. Its outer skin having also some astringency renders the whole bean, when boiled in oxycrate, a suitable remedy for cæliac and dysenteric affections. In a cataplasm it cures inflammations and swellings, and dispels the milk in the breasts. * * * * * COMMENTARY. We have stated in the First Book the difficulty of determining exactly the nature of the ancient faba. See Parkinson (Theatre of Plants, 1054) and Dickson (Husbandry of the Ancients.) Dioscorides describes two species, the Egyptian and the Greek, of which the former, there can be little doubt, is the _Nelumbium speciosum_. See Sprengel (Ad Dioscor. ii, 128), and Lindley (Veget. King. 414.) The other, as we formerly stated, was probably a variety of our small bean. The characters of both are fully stated by Dioscorides, from whom Galen and our author borrow largely under this head. They treat, however, only of the Greek bean. Dioscorides says the Egyptian is astringent and stomachic; that the flour of it made into a poultice, answers in dysenteric and colic affections, and in earache. The Arabians give a very full account of the two species of bean, both as articles of food and as medicines. See in particular, Avicenna (ii, 2, 241); Serapion (c. 97); Rhases (Cont. l. ult. i, 279.) Avicenna and Rhases agree in commending beans for spitting of blood, and other affections of the chest. Κύανος, Cyanus, is possessed of acrid, purgative, and discutient powers, greater than those of the cinnabar. It has also some astringency. * * * * *