Natural History, Vol. 3

are drunk. Even the ancients believed that fever was driven away in wine. And oil is made from the seed, as we have said, which itself, when infused into the ears, affects the mind. And wondrously, just as they have published remedies against poison for those who had drunk it, they also published it [the poison] itself as a remedy, to such an extent, with no limit to trying all things, that they were compelled to make even poisons beneficial.

Of linozostis, parthenion, hermupoa, or rather mercurialis, and achilleos, and panaces heracleon, syderitis, millefolium, and of scopa regia, and hermion, teucrium, splenion, and melampodium or helleborus, how many types of them there are, and of black and white hellebore for medicine, and when it should be given, and how it is to be taken, and to whom it should not be given, and that it kills mice. Chap. V.

Linozostis or parthenion was discovered by Mercury, for which reason many among the Greeks call it hermupoa, while among us all call it mercurialis. There are two types of it, male and female, which is the more efficacious, with a stalk a cubit high, sometimes branched at the top, with leaves narrower than basil, with dense joints, many cavities in the axils, and with abundant seed hanging in the joints of the female; in the male, standing near the joints, it is rarer, shorter, and twisted, whereas in the female it is loose and white. The leaves are darker in the males, and lighter in the females; the root is superfluous and very thin. They grow in cultivated fields. It is wondrous what is reported concerning each of its types: that the former causes males to be born, and the latter, females. This happens if, from the time of conception, the juice is immediately drunk in passum (raisin wine), or if the leaves are eaten, boiled with oil and salt, or raw with vinegar. Some boil it in a new earthenware vessel with heliotrope and two or three ears of grain, until it is boiled down. They command that the decoction be given and