Re: Fw: Historic poisons

jane zammit wrote:
> 
> next insight.....
> 
>  I think too that the translator is not very good at Latin, and so is using
> plant names (eg oleander and bedeguar) to identify parts of the plant.
> That's my theory anyway. Would be interesting to see the rest of the book
> and how he uses Latin. Will let you know what my friend says.
> >
I think too that the translator is not very good at Latin, and so is
using
plant names (eg oleander and bedeguar) to identify parts of the plant.
That's my theory anyway. Would be interesting to see the rest of the
book
and how he uses Latin. Will let you know what my friend says.
>


My feeling is that Pietro is talking about the different parts of a
dogwood. 

1. de Cornuis spicae = the flower-heads of the dogwood

2. de Cornuis Oleander = the berries of the dogwood (The name Oleander
seems to derive from Latin olea - ie olive; perhaps
the translator is being a bit inventive?)

3. de Cornuis Bedeguar = thorn of the dogwood (bedeguar/bedegar is not
Latin, but Persian I think, meaning thorn or thistle). 


It would be interesting now to know more about the context in the book.
How large a section is it? Does the author treat other
plants in a similar way, in classifying the uses of their
parts for making poisons? etc.

Thanks for that Jane, I am not sure that Pietro was really talking about
Dogwoods as Dioscorides from whom all good plagiarisations flow, wrote
that the berries were edible and good for stomach problems but Pliny
claims that if Bees so much as taste Cornus blossom they die of
diarrhoea so not much consensus there. Galen also thought that they were
edible but of little value as food whilst Matteus Silvaticus wrote that
they tasted good. So all in all, I am not sure that Cornus is the lead
we are looking for.

The book itself was republished in Florence in 1949 with a commentary by
Prof Alberico Benedicenti of the University of Genoa which in many
cases, muddies as much water as it sheds light on. The text consists of
three sections, mineral poisons, vegetable and animal poisons, each
consisting of very brief chapters detailing the symptoms and cure of the
poisons. The chapters are arranged by the parts of plants used so that
Oleander for example, gets two chapters "De suco oleandri" and "De
Cornuis oleandri".  In addition to "Suco" and "Cornuis", there are also
chapters on seeds ("Semine") or just plants presumably on the basis that
the whole plant is toxic except in the case of hemlock which gets two
sections "De cicuta" and "De seminae cicutae" Sometimes just to stop us
getting complacent that we have cracked his codes, he comes up with 
things like Malum castoreo which any normal person would translate as
Beaver's testicles, a medieval favourite, except in this case he has
them in the plant section and to me at any rate, they are just another
of his little mysteries. 

In case anyone out there thinks I am plotting against my mother-in-law
or the US government or something, I am not, I got hooked on Pietro when
I was doing some work on the history of Lavender (almost certainly not
"Spicae", it now turns out) and got intrigued by the weird poisons he
wrote about, cats' brains for instance and the even weirder cures, it
all became sort of addictive. Glad to have you on board Jane, together
we will crack it....one day?

And yes, he was heavily influenced by Arabic texts
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