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

subsection 29

29. Amedum, amillum: i.e. a medicine that is made from the juice of wheat; Platearius says that this medicine is moderately hot and wet, but other doctors say that this medicine is moderately cold and dry; this is how it is made: take clean wheat or gross clean barley, put it in cold water for a day and a night, do not change the water until the grain softens, pound it, squeeze it through cloth, and dry it by the sun or by the fire until it becomes a powder; if a pottage be made of


p.472

it, it is good for drying the excessive wetness that occurs internally in the body. Item, if starch be mixed with sarcocolla, i.e. a gum, and they be well mixed together, put on a linen cloth and put on the surface of the eyes, it will help with their wetness and redness. Item, if a pottage be made of it and white sugar be put in it, it will clean the chest and the lungs and internal abscess in the body, hence it serves well for coughs and for the fine liquid humours that come from the brain; if it be made of barley and mixed with milk of almonds, it serves well against consumption and hectic fever and abscess of the lungs. We say that this medicine should not be used too much by people who are at risk of stone in the kidneys or bladder; this medicine serves well against the humours that fall to the eyes and against abscess of the eyelashes.