Materia Medica, Pharmacology & Bio-Prospecting

Translation of the text

Dioscorides proposes two species of Plantago, one large and the other small. It is commonly called the larger one in Latin, Septinervia, because it usually has distinct leaves with seven strands, or nerves, which, depending on the length of each one of them, extend. The minor has Quinquenervia by name, because, being much narrower, in its latitude it only admits only five nerves. This is also commonly called Lanceola, because it is pointed like a spear iron. Sometimes one finds more nerves, and less, in the leaves of both species: however, in most cases, they follow the number stated. Cold and without bite, it dries out the Plantago to the second degree. The leaves are composed of some subtle and watery parts, and others that are very terrestrial and dry. The seed and the roots are similar in virtue to the leaves: yet they dry out more, and they cool less. The plantain consists of the seed of subtle parts and the roots of gray. There is nothing that so bravely stains all effusion of blood, as the plantain (Plantago), and then mixed its juice with egg whites and Armenian bole, and put for defense on the forehead and temples, and with some subtle wick stuck inside the noses, suddenly restrains the one that spills through them. Among other signs that Discorides gives us, to know the larger Plantago as a vegetable genre. However, some learned men, seeing the name of this Plantago in the Attica language (Attica is the peninsula on which Athens sits) is often taken for chard, and they understand the large plantain to be something similar to the leaves, as it is to the white.

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