COMMENTARY. See Book I, 75. The medicinal asparagus of the ancients would appear to have been different from our garden asparagus, from the description of its root given by Dioscorides (ii, 151), and yet there seems to have been very little difference between them in properties, since both are used for the same culinary and medicinal purposes; the ancient, we suppose, must have been the _A. acutifolius_. From Dioscorides down to the present time, the asparagus has been celebrated as being possessed of deobstruent and diuretic powers, and hence it has been given in jaundice, nephritis, and many other diseases of a like kind. Celsus recommends it as a pickle in affections of the spleen. (iv, 9.) It occurs in the Hippocratic collection, and is fully treated of by the Arabians. See Avicenna (ii, 2, 603); Rhases (Cont. l. ult. i, 667.) Symeon Seth, after repeating from Galen that the asparagus acts upon the kidneys and imparts its odour to it, remarks that this need not surprise us, since, by holding a certain herb of a red colour in the hands, the urine is reddened. What herb he alludes to cannot be exactly ascertained. (V. Not. Bogdani.) At all events it is clear from this that the ancients believed in absorption by the cuticle. The Arabians held that it is antiseptic. Casiri (Bibl. Hist. Arab. 337.) The wild asparagus was called _Corruda_ (Cato de R. R.) Ἀσπλήνιον, Asplenium, _Spleenwort_, or _Ceterach_, has the properties of a substance which consists of subtile particles, but is not hot. It therefore breaks down stones and dissolves indurated spleens. * * * * * COMMENTARY. The spleenwort, or _Asplenium ceterach_, held a place in the Materia Medica from the earliest times down to a very recent period. Dioscorides commends it in diseases of the spleen (whence it derives its name), in strangury, jaundice, and calculus. Galen briefly assigns it the same character, which is repeated by Aëtius and Oribasius, as well as by our author, and also by Avicenna (630.) We cannot find it mentioned by Serapion or Rhases. It held a place in our Dispensatory in the time of Lewis. (Materia Medica A.D. 1791.) Ἀσταφὶς, Uva passa, _the Raisin_; the cultivated is possessed of digestive, astringent, and slightly discutient powers; the wild is possessed of strongly acrid, so as to be strongly phlegmagogue and detergent. * * * * *