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

subsection 87

87. Colafonium: i.e. colophony; hot in the second degree and dry in the third degree; it is best, when it is black outside and clear inside, like a clear-coloured horn; it has the drying and healing virtues; it serves well against dysentery when it is put on a red coal, and the patient takes in the fumes through a stool with a hole in it. The same fumes are good against tenesmus; if the same fumes be taken by the mouth, it will help with asthma, and it will expel and dissolve the gross, viscous, glutinous humours that occur in the passages of the lungs. Item, take a dragma of the aforesaid Greek tar


p.513

and a dragma of mastix, melt them in an earthenware vessel, strain them through a cloth over cold water, remove it from the water after it has been heated, soften it with the fingers in front of the fire, and this will remove hair from the face if it be applied to it gently; it may be kept on the face for an hour or two; this medicine retains its efficacy for two years for all purposes,.