Corpus of Electronic Texts Edition
An Irish Materia Medica (Author: Tadhg Ó Cuinn)

subsection 17

17. Alapsa, galla, pomum quersuus: i.e. an apple that grows on the leaves of the oak; it is cold in the second degree and dry in the third degree; they are good when they are heavy and gross, without holes in them; there is another species of them which is obtained in Asia and Africa, a small species without holes in them; they both have a constricting and tanning virtue; Platearius says to make powder of them, to mix it with vinegar and the white of egg, and to put it on the navel and the kidneys, and it will help with the flux of the abdomen and with the flux of urine of the kidneys. Boil it in rain water, make a fomentation of it on the anus, and it will help with dysentry and haemorrhoids. Pound it and boil it in a tisane of barley, make a clyster of it, and it will help with stranguria. Item, boil the same thing in vinegar and sea water, put bracket fungus in it when it is boiling, put it on the orifice of the stomach, and it will help with every vomiting that comes from weakness of the virtue. Item, the same man says to pound it, boil it in rain water, and apply it on cotton as a pessary in the vagina, and it will help with the women's blood flux; otherwise, boil it in the juice of plantain, and apply it as we have said, and it will do the same thing. Item, make powder of them, mix it with the juice of shepherd's purse, squeeze it through a cloth into the nose, and it will cure the blood flux of the nose. Item, make powder of it, put white of egg through it, and apply


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it as a poultice to the temples, and it will help with the blood flux of the nose. Item, make powder of it, and put it in the wounds, and it will heal the wounds well. Item, if you should wish to make the hair black, take the oak gall that does not have holes in it, and is heavy and complete, boil them in oil until they swell up or become gross in the oil, dry them then in linen cloths, make a fine powder of them with the skin or leaves of the walnut, mix this powder with rain water, boil them together, and then wash the hair or the beard with it, and it will then be black; wash the hair afterwards in warm water lest the skin be spoiled.


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