ON THE PURPLE VIOLET

[It] promotes [sleep] The text begins mid-word with "ciliat," likely completing "conciliat" (procures/promotes), referring to sleep mentioned on the previous page, which a hot or dry imbalance hinders: with egg yolk it softens the pains of the seat the rectum or anus and hemorrhoids: it is also most usefully added to cooling poultices that lull pain.

Let the oil in which the Violets are steeped be either from unripe Olives—which the Greeks call omotribes or omphakinon original: "ὠμοτριβὲς ἢ ὀμφάκινον," referring to oil pressed from unripe olives, valued for its astringent properties—or from sweet Almonds, as Mesue Yuhanna ibn Masawayh, a 9th-century physician says. The violets themselves should be fresh and moist. For once they are dry and their moisture is lost, they cool less and seem to have acquired something of a hot quality.

MORE RECENT authors believe that dry violets are usefully mixed into medicines thought to strengthen the heart.

The LEAVES of Violets, when eaten as a vegetable, cool, moisten, and soften the bowels: applied externally, they mitigate all hot inflammations, whether on their own or applied with pearl barley original: "polenta," meaning a barley meal or poultice. They are also applied to a burning stomach and to the eyes, according to Galen. Dioscorides writes that they should even be applied to a prolapsed rectum. Hangovers, Pliny says, and heaviness of the head are dispelled by wearing [violet] wreaths or by smelling them; and they dispel quinsy angina|a severe sore throat or tonsillitis when drunk with water.

That part of them which is purple heals the falling sickness comitialibus|epilepsy; especially for children when drunk in water.

The SEED acts against scorpions as an antidote for their stings.

A hand-drawn manicule in red ink pointing to the text. This passage in Pliny is suspect.

DIOSCORIDES writes that the purple flower—not of the violet, but of the Attic Aster—drunk with water, helps quinsy and the falling sickness in children. From his account, one may suspect—and not without reason—that these remedies were wrongly attributed to the Violet in Pliny's work.

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ON THE THREE-COLORED VIOLET. CHAPTER II.

The LEAVES of the three-colored Violet likely Viola tricolor, commonly known as the Wild Pansy or Heart's Ease are small, and at first indeed rather round, then becoming more oblong, and slightly serrated around the edges...