De Medicina

Celsus, Aulus Cornelius

Celsus, Aulus Cornelius. De Medicina. Spencer, Walter George, translator. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University; London, England: W. Heinemann Ltd, 1935-1938.

29 Again, the bowels are moved by: leavened bread, and especially if it is the grey wheaten or barley bread, cabbage if lightly cooked, lettuce, dill, cress, basil, nettle-tops, purslane, radish, caper, garlic, onion, mallow, sorrel, beet, asparagus, gourds, cherries, mulberries, raisins preserved in jars, all ripe fruit, a fig even dried, but especially a green one, fresh grapes; fat small birds, snails, fish sauce, pickled fish, oysters, giant mussels, sea-urchins, sea-mussels, almost all shellfish, especially the soup made from them, rock fish and all soft fish, cuttlefish ink; any meat eaten when fat, either stewed or boiled, waterfowl, uncooked honey, milk, all things made with milk, mead, wine sweet or salted, soft water; all food sweetened, tepid, fatty, boiled, stewed, salted or watery.

30 On the contrary the bowels are confined: by bread made from siligo or simila flour, especially when unleavened, and particularly so when toasted, and this property is even increased by baking twice, porridge either from spelt or panic or millet, as well as gruel from the same, and especially if these have been parched beforehand; lentil porridge to which beet or endive or chicory or plantain has been added, and especially when these have been previously toasted, or endive by itself, or roasted with plantain, or chicory, the smaller pot-herbs, cabbage twice boiled; eggs rendered hard, especially by poaching; small birds, the blackbird and wood-pigeons especially when cooked in diluted vinegar, cranes, all birds which run rather than fly; the hare, wild she-goat, the liver of animals which yield suet,

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particularly the ox, and suet itself; cheese which has become rather strong in taste, either from age or because of that change which we note in cheese from across the sea, or, if it is new, after it has been cooked in honey or mead; also cooked honey, unripe pears, service fruit, especially those called torminalia, quinces and pomegranates, olives either white or over-ripe, myrtleberries, dates, the purpura and murex, wine resinated or harsh, and that undiluted, vinegar, mead which has been heated, also must boiled down, raisin wine, water tepid or very cold, hard water (that is, which decomposes late), hence principally rain water; everything hard, harsh, rough, grilled, and in the case of the same meat the flesh roasted rather than boiled.

31 The following increase the urine: garden herbs of good odour, as parsley, rue, dill, basil, mint, hyssop, anise, coriander, cress, rocket, fennel; and besides these asparagus, capers, catmint, thyme, savory, charlock, parsnip, especially growing wild, radish, skirret, onion; of game especially the hare; thin wine, pepper both round and long, mustard, wormwood, pine kernels.

32 For producing sleep the following are good: poppy, lettuce, and mostly the summer kinds in which the stalk is very milky, the mulberry, the leek. For exciting the senses: catmint, thyme, savory, hyssop, and especially pennyroyal, rue and onion.