Page:The Perfumed Garden - Burton - 1886.djvu/215

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Concerning Medicines which provoke Abortion
199


Men whose impotence is due either to the corruption of their sperm owing to their cold nature, or to maladies of the organs, or to discharges or fevers and similar ills, or to their excessive promptness in ejaculation, can be cured. They should eat stimulant pastry containing honey, ginger, pyrether, syrup of vinegar, hellebore, garlic, cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamoms,[1] sparrows' tongues,[2] Chinese cinnamon, long pepper, and other spices. He will be cured by using them.

As to the other afflictions which we have indicated—the curvature of the urethra, the small dimensions of the virile member, ulcers on the bladder, and the other infirmities which are adverse to coition—God only can cure them.

  1. Cardamom, already mentioned, is a very aromatic medicinal seed which comes from Italy, and is used in the preparation of theriac. It is the fruit of several kinds of the amomum tree, and especially of the amomum cardamomum.
  2. Sparrow's tongue, stallena panerina, sparrow-wort.

    Observations in the autograph edition.—We are not of that opinion. The sparrow's tongue, as above, seems to be nothing else than the seed of the ash tree. (See the dictionaries of Kazimirski and Beaussier, and the book on medicines of Abd er Rezeug.)