82. Chap. 82.-The Use Made Of The Yeast Of Zythum.

CHAP. 82.—THE USE MADE OF THE YEAST OF ZYTHUM.

Different beverages, too, are made from the cereals, zythum in Egypt, cælia and cerea in Spain, cervesia[1] and numerous liquors in Gaul and other provinces. The yeast[2] of all of these is used by women as a cosmetic for the face.—But as we are now speaking of beverages, it will be the best plan to pass on to the various uses of wine, and to make a beginning with the vine of our account of the medicinal properties of the trees.

Summary.—Remedies, narratives, and observations, nine hundred and six.

Authors quoted.—All those mentioned in the preceding Book: and, in addition to them, Chrysermus,[3] Eratosthenes,[4] and Alcæus.[5]

1. As to the beers of the ancients, see B. xiv. c. 29. Very few particulars are known of them; but we learn from the Talmud, where it is called zeitham. that zythum was an Egyptian beverage made of barley, wild saffron, and salt, in equal parts. In the Mishna, the Jews are enjoined not to use it during the Passover.

2. "Spuma;" literally, "foam."

3. A physician who lived, probably, at the end of the second or the beginning of the first century B.C., as he was one of the tutors of Heraclides of <*>rythræ. His definition of the pulse has been preserved by Galen, De Differ. Puls. B. iv. c. 10, and an anecdote of him is mentioned by Sextus Empiricus.

4. See end of B. ii.

5. A native of Mytilene, in the island of Lesbos, the earliest of the Æolian lyric poets. He flourished at the latter end of the seventh century B.C. Of his Odes only a few fragments, with some Epigrams, have come down to us.