COMMENTARY. It is evidently the _Punica granatum_ L. Woodville says, “Hippocrati arbor audit σίδη unde cortex fructus σίδιον.” They frequently occur in the Hippocratic treatises. (De Diæta, ii, &c.) Cytini is generally put for the flowers of the cultivated pomegranate, and balaustia for those of the wild. The bark of the root called malicorium by Celsus was much used. Pliny, like the medical authorities, speaks of them all as being excellent astringents. He recommends them particularly in cæliac affections and hæmoptysis. (H. N. xxiii, 57.) The most interesting of the ancient authorities on this head is Dioscorides, who says of the sweet pomegranate that it engenders heat and flatulence in the stomach, and hence is unsuitable in fevers; and of the acid, that it relieves ardor of the stomach, and is more astringent and diuretic, being unsavoury and styptic; that the vinous has an intermediate nature; that the kernel of the acid pomegranate, when dried in the sun and sprinkled on food and boiled with it, restrains fluxes of the stomach and bowels; that when macerated in rain-water and drunk, it is beneficial in hæmoptysis, and in a hip-bath is suitable in dysentery and other fluxes; and that the expressed juice of the kernels, when boiled and mixed with honey, is suitable to ulcers in the mouth, on the pudendum and anus; for pterygia on the fingers, spreading ulcers, fungus, earache, and complaints in the nose, and more especially those of the acid pomegranate. (i, 141.) He also treats separately of the flowers and the bark, recommending the latter as an anthelminthic medicine. Galen and the other Greek authorities treat of the pomegranate in nearly the same words as Paulus. It would exceed our limits to give a notice of the various cases in which Celsus prescribes this medicine. Suffice it to say, that he calls it stomachic, cooling, and styptic, and recommends the flowers, the bark, and the root for these and various other purposes. For the Arabians see Avicenna (ii, 2, 109, 313); Serapion (De Simpl. 129); Rhases (Contin. l. ult. i, 443); Averrhoes (Collig. v, 42); Ebn Baithar (i, 499). One of Serapion’s authorities, Ruffus, recommends the acid pomegranate in cardiac disease, and another, Aben Mesue, in cholera and syncope, which attends it. All praise it as a stomachic, more especially in the loss of appetite attending pregnancy, and in vomiting. Rhases and Avicenna say that pomegranate wine relieves intoxication. Both the sweet and the acid are held to be diuretic, but especially the latter. The flesh of the sweet purges yellow bile and strengthens the stomach. They all represent the rind as being anthelminthic. On this use of it, see Book IV, 58, and Pereira (Mat. Med. 1101). It has been a question, by the way, whether the malicorium _or_ σίδιον of the Greeks, was the rind of the fruit or the bark of the root. We used to think it the former, but the examination of a passage in Avicenna (l. c.) has satisfied us that