Latin Texts & Translations

Walnuts ^[Note] have received their name in Greek from being oppressive ^[Note] to the head; for, in fact, the emanations ^[Note] from the tree itself and the leaves penetrate to the brain. The kernels, also, have a similar effect when eaten, though not in so marked a degree. When fresh gathered, they are most agreeable eating; for when dry, they are more oleaginous, unwholesome to the stomach, difficult of digestion, productive of head-ache, and bad for cough, ^[Note] or for a person when about to take an emetic fasting: they are good in cases of tenesmus only, as they carry off the pituitous humours of the body. Eaten beforehand, they deaden the effects of poison, and, employed with rue and oil, they are a cure for quinsy. They act as a corrective, also, to onions, and modify their flavour. They are applied to inflammations of the ears, with a little honey, and with rue they are used for affections of the mamille, and for sprains. With onions, salt, and honey, they are applied to bites inflicted by dogs or human beings. Walnut-shells are used for cauterizing ^[Note] carious teeth; and with these shells, burnt and then beaten up in oil or wine, the heads of infants are anointed, they having a tendency to make the hair grow; hence they are used in a similar manner for alopecy also. These nuts, eaten in considerable numbers, act as an expellent upon tapeworm. ^[Note] Walnuts, when very old, are ^[Note] curative of gangrenous sores and carbuncles, of bruises also. Green walnut-shells ^[Note]

are employed for the cure of lichens and dysentery, and the leaves are beaten up with vinegar as an application for earache. ^[Note]

After the defeat of that mighty monarch, Mithridates, Cneius Pompeius found in his private cabinet a recipe for an antidote in his own hand-writing; it was to the following effect: ^[Note]— Take two dried walnuts, two figs, and twenty leaves of rue; pound them all together, with the addition of a grain of salt; if a person takes this mixture fasting, he will be proof against all poisons for that day. ^[Note] Walnut kernels, chewed by a man fasting, and applied to the wound, effect an instantaneous cure, it is said, of bites inflicted by a mad dog.