Latin Texts & Translations

Bread, ^[Note] too, which forms our ordinary nutriment, possesses medicinal properties, almost without, number. Applied with water and oil, or else rose-oil, it softens abscesses; and, with hydromel, it is remarkably soothing for indurations. It is prescribed with wine to produce delitescence, or when a defluxion requires to be checked; or, if additional activity is required, with vinegar. It is employed also for the morbid defluxions of rheum, known to the Greeks as "rheumatismi," and for bruises and sprains. For all these purposes, however, bread made with leaven, and known as "autopyrus," ^[Note] is the best.

It is applied also to whitlows, in vinegar, and to callosities of the feet. Stale bread, or sailors'-bread, ^[Note] beaten up and baked again, arrests looseness of the bowels. For persons who wish to improve the voice, dry bread is very good, taken fasting; it is useful also as a preservative against catarrhs. The bread called "sitanius," and which is made of three-month ^[Note] wheat, applied with honey, is a very efficient cure for contusions of the face and scaly eruptions. White bread, steeped in hot or cold water, furnishes a very light and wholesome aliment for patients. Soaked in wine, it is applied as a poultice for swellings of the eyes, and used in a similar manner, or with the addition of dried myrtle, it is good for pustules on the head. Persons troubled with palsy are recommended to take bread soaked in water, fasting, immediately after the bath. Burnt bread modifies the close smell of bedrooms, and, used in the strainers, ^[Note] it neutralizes bad odours in wine.