Avicenna represents all the fragrant kinds of apples as being cordial and alexipharmic, and strengtheners of the stomach. One of Rhases’s authorities gives an interesting account of the medicinal powers of apples as cordials, stomachics, and astringents. (Cont. l. ult. i, 441.) Μηλάια Περσικὴ, Malum Persicum, _the Peach_; the shoots and leaves are manifestly bitter, and therefore kill worms when triturated and applied to the navel. The fruit of it, which forms the edible peach, is humid, and cold in the second degree. * * * * * COMMENTARY. See under Μῆλα. Μηλάια Ἀρμενιακὴ, Malus Armeniaca, _Apricot_; the fruit, which some call Præcocia, is possessed of the same powers as peaches. * * * * * COMMENTARY. See under Μῆλα. Μῆον, Meum, _Spignel_; its roots are hot in the third degree, but dry in the second. It is therefore diuretic and emmenagogue, but occasions headache when taken often. * * * * * COMMENTARY. Without doubt it is the _Meum Athamanticum_, which is the same as the _Ligusticum Meum_ of Hooker, Angl., Spignel, Meu, or Bald-money. Our author and most of the other authorities copy closely from Dioscorides, who describes the roots of the meum as being fragrant, and heating the tongue. These, he says, being boiled in water or given in powder without boiling, prove soothing in diseases of constriction about the kidneys and bladder, relieve dysuria, flatulence of the stomach, tormina, hysterical affections, and pains of the joints. When pulverized and administered with honey, they are useful in pectoral defluxions as a linctus, and in a hip-bath promote the flow of the menses. When applied as a cataplasm to the region of the pubes in infants, they are said by him to produce the discharge of the urine. But when taken immoderately, the meum occasions headache. (i, 3.) In the above extract, by “diseases of constriction” Dioscorides alludes to a well-known dogma of the Methodists. It would appear, then, that he was imbued with the principles of that sect. None of the other Greek authorities treat of it so fully as Dioscorides. As far as we have discovered, it does not occur in the works of Hippocrates, nor in those of Celsus. For the Arabians, see Avicenna (ii, 2, 454); Serapion (De Simpl. 182); Rhases (Collig. l. ult. i, 477); Averrhoes (Collig. v, 42.) They do nothing but copy from Dioscorides. In the works of all our old herbalists and authorities on the English Dispensatory, down to the days of Quincy and Lewis, the meum retains a place with all its ancient characters. Μῖλαξ, Milax or Smilax, _Bindweed_; both the smooth, and the rough species which twines round trees, are possessed of acrid and heating powers. * * * * *