ESDRA.

*Esdra* has equal effects, it promotes itself with equal praises

And extols itself with the titles with which *Aurea* shines;

Hence I shall speak with a shorter pen concerning the praises of *Esdra*,

Than its glory of virtues would wish to be reckoned,

For on the very first front of my entire little book

My rich page preceded with fertile verse

Concerning the titles of *Esdra*, in which *Aurea* agrees with it,

There is no need to describe any praises except its private ones,

Which are more proper and special than those set forth by us.

Every malady that is without phlegmon and the heat of fever,

For which coldness or a cold humor

Provides the foundation, the administration of *Esdra* cures.

The rational faculty, which a turbid humor impedes,

*Esdra* frees, if it is given with nutmeg,

And clears the eye of the mind by driving away the cloud.

The antidotary orders *Esdra*

To be offered with gentian, although its effect proves

That it is more salutary for the chest than for the head:

But aromatics clear the senses,

Purify the brain, sharpen the faculty of reason;

By them their integrity is restored to the spirits,

With mild breezes blowing upon the brain,

With a mixed powder of frankincense and anthera and cinnamon,

*Esdra*, applied beneath the falling uvula, is beneficial to it,

Raises it when relaxed, dries it from all rheum,

And reconciles it to the seat of its proper station.

If they are dissolved with sapa and warm vinegar

And a patient, near the beginnings of the rheumatic cause,

Burdened by a sudden squinancy, gargles it,

He puts to flight and repels the onset of the rheum from himself

And avoids the evil perils of the coming disease.

With the powder of the root of purslane mixed into it,

Smeared over the skin, it glues together the rhagades, which a dry

And melancholic humor or the weather has created,

And consolidates and at the same time seals them with a bond;

The said powder will do the same when combined with honey.

*Esdra* does not close up the fissures of the skin arising from choler,

It separates the extreme parts with a wide division:

It inflames the choler, sets the limb on fire, and burns it.

It deletes the uncertain colors of the body born from the heat

Of the liver in the burning heat of the gall without fever,

Which a thick and viscous matter, intruded into the pathways, has created,

Denying its own outlets to the gall.

Let it be given warm, with which you have boiled down ceterach, maidenhair fern,

Liverwort, hart's tongue, and Venus' hair,

Golden maidenhair, fennel, and parsley.

Which, given with wine of caper, of tamarisk,

Cures the splenetic patient, in the left part of whose side

A confined mass of melancholic dregs swells,

And, distending the places, climbs into a high mound:

Let digestives, however, set in motion the preludes of the cure:

Let soft ointments precede, let cathartics dissolve

Those things which were previously softened, and the more customary use

Of *Esdra* prepares the final complements of health.

After the frequent use of a laxative medicine,

This, given late in the day dissolved with warm wine,

Wards off the joints from rheumatic attacks

For those suffering long-standing arthritis and gout.

When, at the mature time of giving birth, the bonds

Are ruptured by the heavy weight of the fetus, when the cause of pain,

An excessive distension, wounds the womb,

Due to the excess of a larger body, or of giving birth

With an unsuited posture, when, with the structure loosed,

The door of nature passes beyond its proper bars,

Placed beneath the torn womb with the powder of frankincense

Or if it is given to be drunk with warm *Lyaeus*,

It strengthens the limbs injured by the defect of the birth:

It binds what is ruptured: it solidifies what is broken: it restrains what is loosened:

It mitigates and soothes the feeling and the forces of pain.

It washes ears running with rheum and painful ones,

It comforts the teeth and, smeared on, helps women in labor

Having taken on for itself the shape of a plug in the guise of lint,

Let cotton smeared with *musceleum* be dipped in *Esdra*.

When this visits rheumatic ears throughout the night,

It dries and cleans out the purulent matter, and removes the pain:

Or if it irrigates a rheumatic ear drop by drop,

*Esdra* dissolved in unmixed wine or mixed with *musceleum* will help.

They come to the aid of teeth struck by rheum and weighed down by cold humor,

The gums then being smeared.

When Lucina, rival of nature, is unable to complete

The labor of bringing forth light with its proper end,

When the Goddess who stands as the faithful bridesmaid of childbirth,

The little servant of nature, never prevails by any efforts

So as to consign the boy to the vital breezes,

But rather the woman is more hard-pressed, more tormented:

Lying down does not help, sitting does not help her,

An uneven gait does not, nor uneven carrying,

A thin sound is of no benefit, nor a sharp cry,

And that which usually benefits others, which expedites women in labor

So that they give birth—no compression of the voice

Enacted with clenched teeth, helps her elevation,

The provident caution of holding the breath is of no benefit,

Which thrusts the groans down to the lower parts;

He who recites psalms and sacred names over her

Is of no avail here in bowing his head to the shaven priest.

While anxious labor thus badly torments the pregnant womb

And the savage force of pain overcomes the laws of childbirth,

For this cause, offered and allied with wine of rue,

*Esdra* given as a drink is a sufficiently proven medicine,

To which, if the artemisia-infused power is committed,

It is no less welcome, no less apt to strike back at the fates,

Whether it is given by mouth, or placed in the lowest part.

Let the aching belly of the patient be anointed

With *Esdra* and musk oil, to which the juices of fresh

Artemisia have been mixed, and the birth is hastened more:

But let it be quickly removed, lest a greater penalty follow,

If it should be relaxed and the womb should prolapse.

Green artemisia provides these aids for you

If it has been well pounded and bound to the thigh,

It generally removes the perils of a difficult birth:

A young girl, who is inexperienced and still a novice, having suffered no

Yoke of childbirth, and not yet accustomed to the labor,

Because she knows not the laws of giving birth and its rendings,

Is burdened in childbirth, although she has experienced the nuptial

Enticements and the commerce of carnal union.

For Venus and childbirth are not moved on an equal balance,

Because if childbirth proceeded with equal steps as Venus,

A woman would rush to unchastity without law, with the rein

Of lust loosened: but the arduous law of giving birth,

Which is full of the peril of great pain

And as a herald of vice declares the fault without a voice,

Bridles many and keeps them from forbidden embraces.

A ready, over-hasty, and immature lust

Which, impatient of delay, does not endure the sluggish years:

Which, faster than the years, outstrips the swift horses of age

And flies ahead of age on rapid wings,

No longer awaiting the age of mature nature,

When the limbs in the childish body are not yet complete,

While she feels the motions of Venus and pleasant unions,

Achieves conception under the persuasive stimulus of heat.

But harsh Lucina will demand punishment for the lawless copulation,

As a torturer of the fault and an avenger of the guilt,

Profaning the delights of premature Venus,

condemning the little vessels of an age not yet complete,

which are less suited to their functions, although the perverse

will of men insists upon them more fiercely and more.

A fragile shape of the body, wasting, and weak strength

driven by non-natural causes,

since she is proven less suited for dispensing Venus,

she whom Venus accuses, the rule of childbirth condemns.

A very fat, overly fleshy woman either never stamps

a conception in herself, her womb being closed,

or the birth is difficult, because the fat obstructs

the passages, closes the ways, and seals the gate,

setting fleshy barriers against the one striving into the light.

Sometimes a thick humor of viscous blood,

which in the time preceding conception did not have

its customary flow of flux during the lunar hours,

but made the saphenous veins full and tense with swelling,

does not allow the fetus to be exposed to the vital breezes.

Generally, a tumor or an apostasis brings about that same thing,

this [is caused by] a stricture of the natural small matrix.

Often the fetus will be two-headed, or possess a large

head, or be large overall, or dropsical, or triplets

or twins will trouble the innards of the wretched mother.

A dead fetus, or a living one being born in an incorrect posture,

no less torments and twists the wretched parent.

When it is weighed and proven from grave causes

that the birth will be difficult and full of peril,

in the very first movements around the preludes of birth,

let fomentations, vapors, repeated in frequent turns,

and baths precede, to which let these things supply strength:

With *branca*, mallow, *linochidis*, and savin,

southernwood, rue, flax, together with *arthemesia*

Mixing these at the same time with fenugreek and laurel.

Let a decoction of these drench soft wools,

A pile of which, pressed after the liquid has been poured off,

Should bind around the heavy belly from the region of the sides,

Until it reaches the furthest edges of the pubis,

With the hips and belly anointed with warm *musceleum*,

An ophthalmic species ought to be applied to the nostril

With the powder of dittany mixed with the weight of a dram

Of castoreum, let a decoction of fenugreek be drunk:

Or, if she is wealthy, you should offer balsams mixed with wine

To the weight of half a scruple to be drunk:

To the weak let *Diamargariton* and *Rhodozaccara* be given,

And let her languishing face be washed with a rosy stream.

Those whom an asthmatic sound, whom a panting cough strikes,

If you wish to cure them, this potion is the supreme remedy,

And given with *ptisana* it makes the sick person healthy in body. —

For snake bites it is effective, and dog bites,

With a poultice made from it and the juice of mint;

Taken in a drink it is more ready for such things.

*Esdra* remains for a long time in a stable and proper vigor,

And having become seven years old it surpasses itself, and beyond

What it had been at first, it grows into strong acts.

But then it is asserted by many, under a false image of the truth,

That the virtue of this antidote is too small, that it is nothing:

For where so discordant an assembly of spices comes together,

Where there is so much confusion of things,

The sheer number subverts the individual items: and the merit of vigor

Both the parts take away from the whole and the whole from the parts.