COMMENTARY. _Writing Ink._ Dioscorides describes the composition of two different kinds of ink; the former consisting of the soot of pines with gum, and the other containing the soot of rosin, bull’s glue, and copperas. For a fuller account of the inks used by the ancients, see Pliny (H. N. xxxv, 6), Oribasius (Med. Collect, xiii), Isidorus (Orig. xix), and Montfauçon (Palæog. Græca, c. i.) Dioscorides says of it that it is adapted to the healing of putrid ulcers and burns, when rubbed in thick with water and allowed to remain, until cicatrization takes place; for, he adds, when the application falls off the ulcers are healed. (v, 182.) Celsus alludes to the same principle of treating aphthous sores in the throat, but directs the crusts to be formed with alum, chalcitis, or the Atramentum sutorium. The Atramentum scriptorium he only notices once, in describing the operation of trephining the skull. (viii, 4.) Avicenna alludes also to the practice of Dioscorides. (ii, 2, 689.) Μελάνθιον, Nigella sativa, _Gith_, is calefacient and desiccant in the third degree. It is also distinguished for tenuity of parts; and hence when smelled to it cures catarrhs, and is most carminative when taken internally. It is also bitter, and hence it is anthelminthic. It is also detergent and incisive, and hence it agrees with orthopnœa, cleanses leprosies, ejects myrmecia, and promotes menstruation. * * * * * COMMENTARY. It is the _Nigella sativa_, or Gith. Dioscorides, with great precision, and in his usual empirical style, enumerates all the cases in which this substance is applicable. As these in the main are the same as those in which our author recommends it, we need not enter much into an exposition of the views of Dioscorides on this head. He says it promotes the secretion of urine, menses, and milk; removes dyspnœa when drunk with wine; remedies persons stung by venomous spiders; drives away reptiles, in the form of a fumigation; and that it is reported to prove fatal when drunk in large quantity. (iii, 83.) Galen explains its medicinal virtues most scientifically, upon the principles laid down by him in his preliminary dissertation to the Materia Medica, of which we have given an exposition in an extract from Aëtius. Gith, he says, is heating and drying according to the third order, and seems to be attenuant, _or_ of subtile parts; wherefore it cures catarrhs when applied hot in a linen cloth, so as to be constantly smelled to. And it is most carminative, when taken into the body, as is obvious from its being of subtile parts, and of a substance fine-wrought by the heat, wherefore, also, it is bitter; for it was shown in the Fourth Book of these Commentaries, that when a terrene substance arrives at an extreme tenuity and elaboration, the bitter quality is formed. No wonder, then, if it proves vermifuge, not only when eaten, but when applied externally to the belly; for it was formerly shown that a bitter juice does this.