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

subsection 266

266. Triticum: i.e. wheat; hot in the first degree and moderately wet in the middle of the second degree. Wheats are distinguished according to the different times when it is sown, so that Ysaac says that the wheat that is sown in spring and autumn are temperate as compared with other times. Wheats are also distinguished according to their youth or their being old, so that Ysaac says of the old wheat that it nourishes but little and it is indigestible because its natural wetness is reduced by its being old, and its accidental dryness is increased; according to Ysaac, it is at its best when it is between youth and old age, because there is too much wetness in it when it is fresh, and some earthiness, so that windiness is produced in the stomach by digesting it. The bread that is made from clean wheat is hot and dry in the second degree because it takes in hotness from the fire; the juice that is made from wheat has the virtue of cleaning the chest and lungs, and it smoothens the roughness of the voice. A tisane may be made of it as is made of barley, and the tisane of wheat serves well to stop the flux, and the tisane of barley to stop the cough. If wheat be pounded and boiled together with oil, it will help with hard apostumes. If wheat be boiled in water together with rue, and pounded thereafter, and a plaster of it be put


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on the breasts, it will help with their hardness and pain. If wheat be pounded and boiled in juice of henbane, and a plaster of it be put on the joints, it will stop the flow of matter to them. If wheat grains be chewed and put on the bite of a mad dog, it will do no harm afterwards; the wheat that grows in good land nourishes better than the wheat that grows in poor land. The bran of wheat is moderately hot and dry, and it has the cleaning virtue. If a tisane be made of this bran, it will clean the chest of the gross viscous humours.