* * * * * COMMENTARY. The _Myrrhis odorata_, as Sprengel remarks, agrees very well with Dioscorides’s description of this plant. Dioscorides says of it, that when drunk with wine it relieves those who have been bitten by phalangia; that it promotes the menstrual and lochial discharges; taken in draughts is useful in phthisis; and that some say, that when taken in a pestilential season it preserves persons free from the disease. (iv, 114.) None of the other Greek authorities supply anything of interest under this head. We have not been able to find it either in the works of Hippocrates or of Celsus. We are at some loss to account for its being also overlooked, as far as we, upon a cursory examination of their works, can discover, by the Arabian authorities. Was it that those _illiterate scholars_ could not distinguish it from _myrrh_ and _myrtle_? Our old English herbalists, in like manner, seem to have known little about it, and it has long ceased to hold a place in our Dispensatory. Μυρρίνη, Myrtus, _the Myrtle_, is composed of opposite ingredients. But the cold and terrene prevails in it, and hence it is powerfully desiccative. The myrtis, which is a callous excrescence on the trunk and branches of it, is strongly desiccative and astringent. The dried leaves are more desiccative than the green. The fruit and juice are possessed of similar powers, both when administered externally and internally. * * * * * COMMENTARY. It is the _Myrtus communis_. The _myrtis_ or _myrtas_ of our author is the same as the _myrtidanum_ of Dioscorides, and most probably was some morbid excrescence upon it. Dioscorides calls the myrtle astringent, and recommends it in such a variety of cases that it would occupy too much space to enumerate them all; such, for example, as hæmoptysis, erosion of the bladder; as a stomachic and diuretic; an alexipharmic in the case of persons stung by phalangia or scorpions; as a soothing application in inflammations and extrasavated blood about the eyes; for furfures, achores, exanthemata, and so forth. (i, 155.) The excrescence already mentioned possesses, he says, stronger powers than the fruit or leaves, and is mixed with cerate, pessaries, hip-baths, and cataplasms requiring astringency. (i, 156.) Galen gives a somewhat fuller, but not a materially different, account of the myrtle from our author. He says it is a powerful astringent, both internally and externally. Aëtius abridges him, as Oribasius does Dioscorides. Celsus notices the berries and boiled leaves of myrtle frequently as astringent and cooling articles. The Arabians treat of them very fully. See Avicenna (ii, 2, 446); Rhases (Cont. l. ult. i, 475); Serapion (De Simpl. 92); Averrhoes (Collig. v, 42); Ebn Baithar (i, 38.) Avicenna recommends the decoction of its leaves as an astringent in profuse sweats, fetor of the armpits, in hot apostemes, erysipelas, herpes, &c. He also prescribes it