[122] See B. xvi. c. 23. His description here is faulty, it being solely a natural pitch or mineral bitumen, without any admixture of vegetable pitch. Vitruvius calls this pissasphalt, pitch; but Ælian, more correctly, bitumen. The names now given to it are mineral pitch, and malthe or pitch of Malta.
[123] In B. xvi. c. 23. Fée thinks that the use of it is more likely to have been injurious than beneficial.
[124] Or tæda. See B. xvi. c. 19.
[125] Fée says, that within the last century, the wood of the lentisk or mastich, and the oil of its berries, figured in the Pharmacopœias. Their medicinal properties are far from energetic, but the essential oil may probably be of some utility as an excitant.
[126] This property is still attributed in the East to the leaves and resin of the lentisk. We learn from Martial, B. xiv. Epig. 22, that the wood of the lentisk, as well as quills, was used for tooth-picks.
[127] this, Fée says, is not the fact.
[128] See B. xii. c. 36, and B. xiv. c. 25.
[129] “Smegmata.”
[130] Littré thus reads the whole passage, “Sive cum aquâ, ut ita foveantur,”—“A decoction of it is made with water for the purpose of fomentation.”
[131] See B. xii. c. 3.