[1295] Pliny is the only author who makes mention of this singularly absurd notion.
[1296] In B. xix. c. 24: so, too, Dioscorides, B. iv. c. 154. The wild cucumber of Pliny, as Fée observes, is in reality not a cucumber, but a totally different plant, the Cucumis silvestris asininus of C. Bauhin, the Momordica elaterium of Linnæus, or squirting cucumber.
[1297] Elaterium, Fée says, is not extracted from the seed, but is the juice of the fruit itself, as Pliny, contradicting himself, elsewhere informs us. Theophrastus commits the same error, which Dioscorides does not; and it is not improbable that Pliny has copied from two sources the method of making it.
[1298] Meaning the juice and seed combined, probably. Fée thinks that it is to this the medicament owes its name, from ἐλαύνω, to “drive” or “impel.” It is much more probable, however, that the medicine was so called from its strong purgative powers; for, as Galen tells us, ἐλατήριον was a name given to purgative medicines in general.
[1299] Dioscorides, B. iv. c. 154, states to this effect. Fée remarks that, singularly enough, most of the antiophthalmics used by the ancients, were composed of acrid and almost corrosive medicaments, quite in opposition to the sounder notions entertained on the subject by the moderns.
[1300] Dioscorides says the same; and much the same statements are made by Celsus, Apuleius, Marcellus Empiricus, and Plinius Valerianus. The different parts of the plant, dried, have but very feeble properties, Fée says.
[1301] A sort of tetter or ring-worm. Celsus enumerates four varieties.
[1302] Itch-scab, probably.
[1303] A disease of the skin, in which the scab assumes the form almost of a lichen or moss.
[1304] “Panos.” “Panus” was the name given to a wide-spreading, but not deeply-seated, tumour, the surface of which presented a blistered appearance.