Pliny the Elder, Natural History (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose] [word count] [lemma count] [Plin. Nat.].
<<Plin. Nat. 35.13 Plin. Nat. 35.14 (Latin) >>Plin. Nat. 35.15

35.14 CHAP. 14.—RUBRICA; LEMNIAN EARTH: FOUR REMEDIES.

Some persons have wished to make out that sinopis is nothing else but a kind of rubrica [Note] of second-rate quality, looking upon earth of Lemnos as a rubrica of the highest quality. This last approaches very nearly to minium, [Note] and

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was as highly esteemed among the ancients as the island that produces it: it was never sold except in sealed packages, a circumstance to which it was indebted for its additional name of "sphragis." It is with this material that they give the undercoating to minium, in the adulteration of which it is also extensively employed.

In medicine it is very highly esteemed. Applied to the eyes in the form of a liniment, it allays defluxions and pains in those organs, and arrests the discharges from lachrymal fistulas. To persons vomiting blood, it is administered with vinegar to drink. It is taken also internally for affections of the spleen and kidneys; and by females for the purpose of arresting flooding. It is employed too, to counteract the effects of poisons, and of stings inflicted by sea or land serpents; hence it is that it is so commonly used as an ingredient in antidotes.



Pliny the Elder, Natural History (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose] [word count] [lemma count] [Plin. Nat.].
<<Plin. Nat. 35.13 Plin. Nat. 35.14 (Latin) >>Plin. Nat. 35.15

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