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

subsection 92

92. Conium: i.e. seeds of hemlock; these seeds are cold and lethal, and if they are given internally, they will kill immediately, if a drink of hot wine be not given immediately afterwards; if this be given, it will help immediately, without doubt; if these seeds be put as a plaster on the breasts, it will stop the milk of the breasts, and will dry them. Item, take the juice of this herb, and boil its own foliage, pounded, in this juice, and make a plaster of it for the erysipelas, and for the herpes, and it will help. Item, take the juice of this herb and rub it on the breasts of maidens, and the breasts will not fall, but it will make them slender. If it be rubbed likewise on the testicles, it will curb their desire. If a plaster of this herb when pounded, with pig lard and silver flake, be put on the joints, it will help with disease of the joints. Item, if a plaster of this herb on its own be put on the hot joints, it will help them. Against arthritis and podagra, if this herb be pounded and kneaded in flour of barley, and put in an oven, and pounded after that, and mixed with vinegar and the juice of this herb, and put as a plaster likewise on the joints, it will help with every gout and arthritis that comes from hotness. If this herb be pounded in strong wine, and in the water of hemlock, and put as a plaster on the groin, and on the belly, it will help with ileus and colic. Item, take this herb, two handfulls, and one handfull of scariola, pound them well, boil them in pig lard as for an ointment, and it will help with a scabby head. Item, take the root of this herb, and boil it under ashes, pound it


p.518

well and put pig lard and flour of wheat through it, and put it on swollen glands, and it will help. Platearius says that the power of this herb is great, in its root and in its full seed and in its individual seeds, and it called ‘herba quae interfecit Socratem’, i.e. the herb that killed Socrates.