Pliny on Erica

Gaius Plinius Secundus greets you!

I have been asked to share with you my knowledge of the plant known as erica, and some of its medicinal applications, which may not be as well known today as they once were.

I shall begin by revisiting my Natural Histories in which I wrote of the erica being also known as myrice, and being used by the people of Ameria to make their brooms. But that is just the beginning of its usefulness.

Erica has many medicinal uses. The leaves, when crushed and taken in drink, are an antidote to the sting of a serpent. Boiled in wine and applied with honey they will heal cancerous sores.

Erica is especially useful in afflictions of the spleen, the juice being extracted and taken with wine. So marvellous is its antipathy to this organ of the body, that if swine drink from a trough made from this wood they will be found to lose the spleen. This is why food and drink are given to sufferers from maladies of the spleen in vessels made of this wood.

Some commentators have dismissed these latter claims, saying that they cannot possibly apply to any of the heaths of Europe, none of which produce wood large enough to make a trough or drinking vessel. They should read my words more closely. I refer to the wood of the tamarice, a much larger tree found in Eurasia and Africa. In fact, we ancients generally grouped together the brooms, heaths and tamarisks, under the name of erica.

And broom, by the way, bruised with axle-grease, is a cure for diseases of the knees.......

Many more such facts could I bring to your notice, but in these hurried days people do not have the time to read at length on various subjects no matter how interesting they may be. I myself have been asked specifically not to exceed twenty lines in this blog. Twenty lines! I believe I have failed to comply.