Sordid wool[(63)] dipt either in vinegar, or wine, with an addition of oil; bruised dates, bran boiled in salt water or vinegar, are all at the same time both restringent and emollient.
But the following things both restringe and cool, the wall herb (which they call parthenium or perdicium, feverfew) serpyllum, pennyroyal, basil, the blood herb (which the Greeks call polygonon[ AZ ],) purslane, poppy-leaves, and clippings of vines, coriander-leaves, henbane, moss, skirret, smallage, nightshade (which the Greeks call struchnos)[ BA ], cabbage-leaves, endive, plantain, fenel-seed, mashed pears or apples, chiefly quinces, lentils; cold water, especially rain water, wine, vinegar; and bread, or meal, or sponge, or pieces of cloth, or sordid wool, or even linen, moistened in any of these liquors; Cimolian chalk[(64)], tarras[(65)], oil of quinces[(66)], or myrtles[(67)], or of roses[(68)], bitter oil[(69)], leaves of vervains bruised with their tender stalks; of this kind are olive, cypress, myrtle, mastich-tree, tamarisk, privet, rose, bramble, laurel, ivy, pomegranate.
Boiled quinces, pomegranate bark, a hot decoction of vervains, which I mentioned before, powder from the lees of wine, or myrtle-leaves, bitter almonds, all restringe without cooling.
A cataplasm made from any meal is heating, whether it be of wheat, or of far[(70)], or barley, or bitter vetch, or darnel, or millet, or panick, or lentil, or beans, or lupines, or lint, or fenugreek; the meal after being boiled is laid on hot. But every kind of meal boiled in mulse is more effectual for this purpose, than the same prepared with water. Besides these, Cyprine oil[(71)], or iris[(72)], marrow, fat of a cat, mixed with oil, especially if it be old, salt, nitre[(73)], git, pepper, cinquefoil.
And we may observe in general, that those things, which both restringe violently and cool, are hardening: and those which heat and dissipate, are softening: but the most powerful cataplasm for softening is made from the seeds of lint or fenugreek.
Now physicians make use of all these things variously, both by themselves, and mixed; so that we rather see what each of them was strongly persuaded of, than what upon certain trial he found to be useful.
A. CORNELIUS CELSUS
OF