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.
CHAP. 15.—EGYPTIAN EARTH.
Of the other kinds of rubrica, those of Egypt and Africa are of the greatest utility to workers in wood, from the fact of their being absorbed with the greatest rapidity. They are used also for painting, and are found in a native state in iron-mines.[1876]
CHAP. 16.—OCHRA: REMEDIES DERIVED FROM RUBRICA.
It is from rubrica also, that ochra[1877] is prepared, the rubrica being burnt[1878] in new earthen pots well luted with clay. The more highly it is calcined in the furnace, the better the colour is. All kinds of rubrica are of a desiccative nature, and hence it is that they are so useful for plasters, and as an application even for erysipelas.
CHAP. 17.—LEUCOPHORON.
Half a pound of Pontic sinopis, ten pounds of bright sil,[1879] and two pounds of Greek melinum,[1880] well mixed and triturated together for twelve successive days, produce “leucophoron,”[1881] a cement used for applying gold-leaf to wood.
CHAP. 18.—PARÆTONIUM.
Parætonium[1882] is so called from the place[1883] of that name in Egypt. It is sea-foam,[1884] they say, solidified with slime, and hence it is that minute shells are often found in it. It is prepared also in the Isle of Crete, and at Cyrenæ. At Rome, it is adulterated with Cimolian[1885] earth, boiled and thickened. The price of that of the highest quality is fifty denarii per six pounds. This is the most unctuous of all the white colours, and the most tenacious as a coating for plaster, the result of its smoothness.