Latin Texts & Translations

The periclymenos ^[Note] is also a shrub-like plant, with two whitish, soft, leaves, arranged at intervals. At the extremity, among the leaves, is the seed, hard, and very difficult to pluck. It grows in ploughed fields and hedges, entwining around every object from which it can gain support. The seed is dried in the shade, pounded, and divided into lozenges. These lozenges are left to dissolve, in three cyathi of white wine, for a period of thirty days, and are given for diseases of the spleen; the volume of which is gradually diminished either by discharges of bloody urine, or else by alvine evacuation, the effects of the medicament being perceptible at the end of ten days. The leaves, boiled, act as a diuretic, and are useful for hardness of breathing. Taken in drink, in manner above-

mentioned, they facilitate delivery, and bring away the afterbirth.