CHAP. 2. (1.)—THE WILD CUCUMBER; TWENTY-SIX REMEDIES.
We have already stated[1] that there is a wild cucumber, considerably smaller than the cultivated one. From this cucumber the medicament known as "elaterium" is prepared, being
the juice extracted from the seed.[2] To obtain this juice the
fruit is cut before it is ripe—indeed, if this precaution is not
taken at an early period, the seed is apt to spirt[3] out and be
productive of danger to the eyes. After it is gathered, the fruit is
kept whole for a night, and on the following day an incision
is made in it with a reed. The seed, too, is generally sprinkled
with ashes, with the view of retaining in it as large a quantity of
the juice as possible. When the juice is extracted, it
is received in rain water, where it falls to the bottom; after
which it is thickened in the sun, and then divided into lozenges,
which are of singular utility to mankind for healing dimness[4]
of sight, diseases of the eyes, and ulcerations of the eyelids.
It is said that if the roots of a vine are touched with this
juice, the grapes of it will be sure never to be attacked by
birds.
The root,[5] too, of the wild cucumber, boiled in vinegar, is
employed in fomentations for the gout, and the juice of it is
used as a remedy for tooth-ache. Dried and mixed with resin,
the root is a cure for impetigo[6] and the skin diseases known
as "psora"[7] and "lichen:"[8] it is good, too, for imposthumes
of the parotid glands and inflammatory tumours,[9] and restores
the natural colour to the skin when a cicatrix has formed.—
The juice of the leaves, mixed with vinegar, is used as an
injection for the ears, in cases of deafness.
1. 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.
2. 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.
3. Meaning the juice and seed combined, probably. Fée thinks that it
is to this the medicament owes its name, from e)la/unw, 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,
e)lath/rion
was a name given to purgative medicines in general.
4. Dioscorides, B. iv. c. 154, states to this effect. Fée remarks that,
singularly enough, most of the antiophthalmies 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.
5. Dioscorides says the same; and much the same statements are made
by Celsus, Apulcius, Marcellus Empiricus, and Plinius Valerianus The
different parts of the plant, dried, have but very feeble properties,
Fée says.
6. A sort of tetter or ring-worm. Celsus enumerates four varieties.
7. Itch-scab, probably.
8. A disease of the skin, in which the scab assumes the form almost of a
lichen or moss.
9. "Panos." "Panus" was the name given to a wide-spreading, but
not deeply-seated, tumour, the surface of which presented a blistered
appearance.