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

subsection 220

Piper nigrum: i.e. the black pepper; hot and dry in the fourth degree; it retains its efficacy for two years. It has the diuretic virtue. If it be put powdered in wounds, it will stop proud flesh, and will be a sufficient caustic for them; it has the attractive and corroding virtues, according to Avicenna. If powdered pepper be put to the nose, it will provoke the sneezing that results in the cleaning from the brain of the gross humours. If powdered pepper and figs be boiled and eaten, it will clean the cold humours from the chest. If powdered pepper and anise be eaten with figs after a meal, it will comfort the digestion. Item, if powdered pith of black pepper be put in rose water and applied to the eye, it will release the cataract of the eye. Item, to make the following sauce to soothe the appetite: take sage, mint and parsley, pound them and extract the juice from

p.603

them, put into it flour of white bread, roasted, and powdered pepper, mix them with vinegar or wine, and eat it together with the meal. People with the choleric humour or the sanguine humour should not use pepper, because it makes them susceptible to skin disease. There is another sort of it, the long pepper, which has a greater comforting virtue than the black pepper. Avicenna says that the long pepper is a catkin-like fruit that grows on the herb on which the black pepper grows. Platearius says that it is obtained on mountains in India, and this is how it is obtained: there are so many snakes and poisonous beasts on that mountain that it has to be burnt so that the poisonous animals leave it, and that it how it is obtained, and how it becomes black.