Page:The Perfumed Garden - Burton - 1886.djvu/220

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204
The Perfumed Garden

may be put into a bottle, and, thus enclosed, buried in a warm dunghill until they are dissolved into a coherent mass and form a sort of liniment, which is used for repeatedly anointing the member. The member is certain to greatly benefit by this.

One may likewise take rosin and wax, mixed with tubipore,[1] asphodel,[2] and cobbler's glue,[3] with which mixture rub the member, and the result will be that its dimensions will be enlarged.

The efficacy of all these remedies is well known, and I have tested them.

  1. The tubipore is a calcareous polypus composed of cylindrical tubes, and forming round masses, often of great size, in the sea. Its medical properties are much doubted.

    Observations in the autograph edition.—This substance is called in certain texts deum el akhouine, and is, according to the book of the physician Abd-er-Rezeug, the juice of a plant called chiane, alias hei el aleum; the juice goes also by the name deum et tsabane. We have ascertained that hei el aleum signifies also the sempervivum (a name given to a kind of house leek, and the literal translation of deum et tsabane is dragon's blood. This is all the information we could gather.

  2. The asphodel (daffodil) is a plant with lilaceous flowers, coming from Italy. There is a yellow and a white kind.

    Observation in the autograph edition.—Boureouk signifies also borax and nitre.

  3. The glue used by the Mussulman cobblers to glue their leather is made of a single substance, the spleen of cattle or sheep, which they call tihal.

    Note in the autograph edition.—The only text which gives this passage calls this substance annzeronte or annezeronte, the rosin of the sarcocollus, which was credited with the property to make the flesh firm and heal wounds.