View Latin Transcription

Information about this page

Next Page

Next Chapter

So now you also bloomest in your golden glory,

To him, who made you just as well as us and all the world,

Here too for the first time for the glory and fame,

You golden yellow poppy, admirable flower!

Who just short time ago on the Chinese border

let the smooth petals shine!

Brockes

This well-known plant grows in most countries of the earth. It is praised as much by the scholars of old and modern times as it is popular with the common man. Therefore and because of its common use we will also mention some of its medicinal powers here. The Greeks and Romans laid them down before their gods and preferred them to the best plants.

The ancients have recorded three species of garden poppy: the white one, whose dried seeds were served with honey as a desert; they were also sprinkled on peasant bread, in egg yolk and the lower crust or rind was seasoned with parsley and black caraway with rustic, home-made taste. The second poppy species is the black one, the head of which yields a milky sap upon scarification. The third species was called 'Rhóa' by the Greeks and 'wild poppy' by the Romans. That the poppy was always valued by the Romans demonstrates Tarquinius-Superbus who chopped off the tallest poppy heads in his garden in front of the envoy sent by his son, with this act giving the blood-thirsty advice in a concealed manner. Of the garden poppy the peel itself was grated and taken to promote sleep. The seeds help against the "kleiner Aussatz" [probably referring to smallpox or measles]. The black poppy brings sleep if the head is scarified, as Diagoras recommended, as the sap discharges: or, as Jollas suggested, when the flower fades, during a pleasant hour of the day, that is when the dew on it has dried. They suggest to scarify it underneath the head and the seed cup. In no other species is the head scarified. Like from any other herb, this sap is collected with wool or, if there is only a small amount of sap, it is taken up with the nail of the thumb or with lettuce leaves mainly on the following day when it starts to dry. A large amount of poppy sap, however, is thickened, molded into pastilles and dried in the shade. It not only has a sleep promoting effect but, if it is taken too frequently, it has the power to kill in the sleep. We know, for example, that the father of Licinius Cácina, a man of the rank of a high judge in Bavilis in Spain,