Traditional medicine Remedies Good advice Commentary

Pedanius Dioscorides medicine

Traditional medicine

• Pedanius Dioscorides was a Greek surgeon
• who travelled with the Roman army.
• Wherever he went, he asked local people
• about their traditional remedies, and tried them out on the troops,
• recording the names and uses of about six hundred remedies,
• eventually included in his five-volume pharmacopeia
• that was copied, translated, and kept
• in continuous circulation for fifteen centuries.

Remedies

• Cinnamon is good for coughs,
• dropsy, kidney diseases,
• and difficult urination.
• A decoction of cardamom
• is good for those who have coughs,
• sciatica, paralysis, hernias,
• convulsions, and griping,
• and it expels rectal worms.
• Gum Elemi Tree resin
• takes off scars in the eyes,
• helps with gum disease and toothache,
• and is given to the splenetic, epileptic, and asthmatic.
• For baldness, rub on
• the burnt skin of hedgehog
• with moist pitch.
• The flesh of mussels is effective
• applied to a person bitten by a dog.
• River crab, pounded raw
• and taken as a drink with an ass’s milk,
• helps snakebites
• and the bites of spiders and scorpions.
• Eating roasted brain of hare
• is good for the trembling that comes from fear
• and for teething in children.
• Take rhubarb root in a drink
• for gaseousness,
• weakness of the stomach,
• suffering, convulsions,
• spleen, liver ailments,
• inflammation in the kidneys,
• griping and disorders of the bladder and chest,
• matters related to hypochondria,
• afflictions around the womb,
• sciatica, spitting up blood,
• asthma, rickets, dysentery,
• abdominal cavity afflictions,
• flows of fevers,
• and bites from poisonous beasts.
• Seawater is good
• for disorders of the nerves,
• and chilblains before ulceration.
• Vinegar and salt, sipped and gargled,
• kills leeches, cleans dandruff,
• and cures ulcers on the scalp.
• Grime from gymnasium walls
• helps for abrasions,
• and for removing scaliness and ulcers.

Good advice

• Whatever they say—old wives,
• old friends, scam artists,
• quacks, and TV evangelists—
• is good for a consideration.
• If you don’t know by now, then keep
• an open mind, and don’t fill it with rubbish.
• They say that time heals, but it can also
• make well-meant advice seem ridiculous.