Note 239 — Chapter VII · CONNEXION BETWEEN MAURITANIA AND AMERICA.

Bochart imagines that the Phœnicians had given the name to the island, Gum-ohal, signifying “fossa smegmatis.” It was found in Thessaly, Lycia, Sardis and Umbria. Avicenna calls it Al Siraph, from a town on the Persian gulf. Dioscorides says, gall prepared with nitre and earth of Cineola, is the best detergent. The ancients knew the saponaceous root with which in India shawls and muslins are washed, and which the Persians, Turks, and Arabs, use for the hair, and otherwise where great delicacy is required. It was from a Persian word called Asleg, by the Arabs Condus, by the Greeks στρούθιον, whence στρουθιζειν. Pliny calls it (Nat. His. l. xix. c. 3), “radiculam et herbam lanariam.” The detersives used by the ancients were various, but were nearly the same as those in present use among the Mahometans. They were called by the general name of smegmata. A common detersive was bean meal, which the Romans called lomentum, and a paste from lupine flour. Galen (De Aliment. Facul. i.) says, “Cutis sordes fabacea farina manifestè deterget,” (bean flour certainly takes off filth from the skin), on which account procuresses and dainty women anciently made great use of it: they smeared it on the face, and it was said to remove freckles and pimples. Dioscorides goes so far as to assert that it will render cicatrices of a uniform colour with the rest of the skin. It stops the blackness arising from blows. Lomentum will take away wrinkles, if we are to believe Martial (l. iv.)

Lumento rugas ventris quod condere tentas.

Pliny says (l. xxviii. c. 25), that lupine flour made into a paste with vinegar, will, if smeared on in the bath, remove pimples and itching, and dry up running sores; that a decoction of lupines will cure freckles and brace the skin.