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

subsection 85

85. Cinamomum: i.e. cinnamon; hot in the third degree and dry in the second degree; it retains its efficacy for ten years; it greatly soothes the digestion and comforts the heart. If powder of cinnamon and caraway be put in a potage, it will soothe the digestion; it also makes the breath good, and, if the breath be foul because of the gums,


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the teeth should be washed in warm water, and this powder sprinkled on them, and this will help with their foulness. Cinnamon serves well against heartburn; it has the consuming and cleansing virtues – because of its scent it has the comforting virtue, and because of its glutinous quality it has the consuming virtue. There are two sorts of it, i.e. a thick sort and a thin sort, and the thick sort is best for the flux, and the thin sort for the vomit. A sauce may be made thus: take parsley, vinegar, mint, and pellitory, equal amounts of each, and powder of cinnamon, and mix them as we have said as a sauce. Item, Platearius says to give cinnamon against the cough that comes from wetness and from windiness of the lungs; it serves against the dropsy that is known as tympanitis. Macer says to give powder of cinnamon against the wound of the mad dog, to put it into the wound, and it will help with the poison. If powder of cinnamon and water of roses be mixed and put on the eyes, it will help with their pain and inflammation as we have said. If powder of gross cinnamon be drunk in water it will help with haemorrhoidal flux, and Platearius says that when cinnamon is given in a gross purge, it serves as a laxative for the abdomen, and when it is given in a fine purge, it increases the urine. Item, Platearius says if cinnamon and barley meal and juice of mint, be put as a plaster on the stomach and intestines, it will stop their pain. If the same powder be blown into the nose, it will stop the flux of blood from the nose. Item, if dried figs and cinnamon and wine be mixed and put as a plaster on swollen glands, it will help with them; Platearius says that cinnamon expels and prevents anything putrid. The same man says that, if cinnamon be given to a woman in labour, she will give birth to the foetus, and if be given to a woman

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from whom the afterbirth has not been taken, it will be taken forthwith, and if it be given to a woman with a false conception, she will be relieved of it.