SECT. XXXIX.—ON UNCONCOCTED ULCERS, AND SUCH AS HAVE NOT SUPPURATED.
Recent ulcers, and such as being in an inflammatory state have not suppurated, may be digested and made to suppurate by these things: of simple things, tepid water poured on them, wheat flour, or chondrus, or bread, or glue for books, applied with turpentine, wax, saffron, frankincense, pitch, rose oil, axunge, or the fat of calves; but the compound application called tetrapharmacon may be applied upon a pledget mixed with rose oil. Old and callous ulcers are concocted by these simple medicines: the dried grape, storax, galbanum, myrrh, Cretan cistus, pitch, rosin, butter, Egyptian mastich and unwashed wool; and by these compound ones: Galen’s plaster without wax, dissolved in oil of ricinus, and applied upon a pledget with old oil, or oleum ricini; and in like manner those called dichromos and basilicon, and the like.
Commentary. Celsus’s list is not very different from our author’s: Concoquunt et movent pus, nardum, myrrha, costum, balsamum, galbanum, propolis, styrax, thuris et fuligo et cortex, bitumen, pix, sulphur, resina, sevum, adeps, oleum. These articles furnish the ingredients of most of our modern applications. For further information respecting each article, the reader is referred to Dioscorides, Galen, and Serapion.