Page:Cyclopaedia, Chambers - Supplement, Volume 2.djvu/427

 S C A

nggej) leaves. 16. The red (lowered mountain fcabious with broader and longer undivided leaves. 17. The fcabious with the virga paftorie, or (mall dipfacus leaf. 18. The narrow leaved fiiaj fcabims. 19. The longheaded red flowered exotic fcabious. 20. The long headed fcabioui with fk-(h coloured flowers. 21. The long headed fcabious with varie- gated flowers. 22. The long headed fcabious with blackifh flowers, with the fmell of civet. 23. The proliferous In- dian fcabious. 24. The Portugal fcabious refembling the Indian. 25. The greater round headed fcabious, called the \efor fcabious. 26. The leJTer round headed fcabious. 27. The lelTer fcabious with deeply divided leaves. 28. The little fcabious with fweet fcented heads. 29. The great leaved Spanifh ttury fcabious. 30. The (larry fcabious with great jagged leaves. 31. The leffer or fea finny fcabious with jagged leaves. 32. The fmalleft ftarry fcabious. 33. The (tarry fcabious with undivided leaves. 34. The annual proliferous ftarry fcabious. 35. The Sicilian fcabious with heart-wort leaves. 36. The (hrubby procumbent moun- tain fcabious, with leaves like the young leaves of the achillea. 37. The Sicilian fhrub fcabious with laureola leaves hoary underneath. 38. The Oiruo fabious with ftock July flower leaves. 39. The narrow leaved umbelliferous and proliferous fcabious, with leaves cut into the middle rib. 40. The flelh coloured flowered fabious, with leaves like the hairy jagged devil's bit. 41. The great tree fcabious of Africa, with undivided, wrinkled, and crenatcd leaves. 42. The fmall fea fcabious. 43. The cut leaved fcabious with large flowers in membranaceous cups, and with woolly feeds. 44. The lead annual m& fcabious with angular feeds. 45. The daify leaved annual fcabious. 46. The greyifh hoary Pyrenean fcabious with large flowers. 47. The frnooth graffy leaved fcabious. 48. The hairy creeping Alpine fcabious with divided leaves. 49. The fcabious with hairy undivided leaves, called the devil's bit. 50. The fcabious with fmooth undivided leaves and blue flowers. 51. The fcabious with undivided leaves and white flowers. 52. The flefh coloured flowered fcabious with un- divided leaves. 53. The fcabious with whole leaves, pro- liferous heads, and blue flowers. 54. The fcabious with leaves like fraxinella. Towrn. Inft. p. 465. The mufk fcabious and other garden kinds are propagated by fowmg their feeds in May or the beginning of June, and the next year they will be very ftrong, flowering from June to September, and producing ripe feeds, which they will not do if fown early in the fpring, and fo made to flower the fame year. The feeds are to be fown on (hady borders, and at Michaelmas the young plants are to be re- moved to the places where they are to remain. They are very hardy, and fcldom perifh, till after they have ripened their feeds. Miller's Gardner's Dift. The common fcabious, of our corn fields, is accounted a great alexipharmic and peaoral ; it is made an ingredient in ptyfans, and infufions given in coughs and all diforders of the lungs, and is recommended greatly by authors in pleu- riiies, quinzies, coughs, afthmas, and confumptions. Some even recommend it in malignant fevers, and even in the plague.

It is alfo ufed externally, either in a ftrong decoaion, or elfe boiled into an ointment with lard in the itch, and many other difoi ders of the (kin.

Scabious, though fo much celebrated with us for its medi- cinal virtues, has been fuppofed by many to have been wholly unknown to the antient Greeks : others who could not give into the opinion of their not knowing fo common a plant, have fuppofed the Jiccbe of Theophraftus and Diofcorides to be the plant we call fcabious, but there is no more iuftnefs in this than in the former opinion.

The antient Greeks knew two very different plants by the name of Jlxbe, but neither of thefe at all anfwered to the charafters or virtues of fcabious; the one was a fhrub, the other an aquatic plant with woolly leaves. The fhrub called ftxbe was the fame with the phcos and hippophcos, a prickly fhrub of a cubit m height, but very full of branches, which grew on the fhores of the ifland of Crete, and other the like places ; and the planty/Wfe was a fmall gnaphalium, or cud- weed, growing in wet places, and ufed for the fluffing of beds, and the packing up of earthen ware, and other brittle things, to prevent their breaking. The other was ufed by the fullers about cloaths.

It is fufficiently evident, from thefe accounts, that neither the one nor the other of thek Jlaibis bad any of the qualities of fcabious ; but though neither of thefe was fcabious, yet it does not follow that fcabious was unknown. Diofcorides and Theophraftus have defcribed a plant called tfonce, from its virtues in curing cutaneous eruptions ; and this agrees, in all refpedts, in figure, as well as qualities with am fcabious. The later Greek writers have called this pfora and thus it ftands in Aetius, and many others. In times long after thefe, however, the names were forgot though the plant and its virtues remained well known • the modern Greeks willing to defcribe fo ufeful a plant,' but ignorant of its name, in their own language, called ilfcam- p'ufa, a name formed out of the Latin word fiabiofi, by the hurpi. Vol. II. ' J „ '

S C A

common change of b into mp, and into u. This Was tong retained in ufe ; and as it was common with the Greeks to leave out the initial letter, /, in many words, fo they fometimes wrote this campiufa.

Fuchfius who was very defirous of undemanding the writ- ings of Myrepfus, confeffes, that he knew not what to make of the words fcampiufa and campiufa, which he fo fre- quently met with in that author ; but though he gives no defcnptioii of the plant, the virtues he attributes to it are thole of fcabious ; and the names are fo eafily difcovered to be derived from the Latin fcabiofa, that there is no room for doubt of its being the fame plant.

bLABROUS /m/, among botanifts. See Leaf.

=CAB R ousy?«tf. See the article Stalk.

r u', the El, g lim namc of a nfh of the cuculus kind, re- »?5 "! g ' he mackrcl 'n fliape, called bvwritersthermfltorio.

srm-li S V S Hlft- Pifc ' P- 2 9°- See 'Irachu-rus,

SUfllNAN, H, or Sch^enanth, in the materia medicil, the dried (talk of a plant brought to us from Arabia. -I his plant is called, by the generality of botanifts, juncus oaoralus and aromaticus ; but Linnaais gives it the name of ijcbmnum, under which head its botanical charaflers are de- fcribed. See Ischjemum.

T he ftalk is ufually eight or ten inches in length, fome- times confiderably more ; it is fmooth and gloffy on the fur- face, and about the thicknefs of a wheat-ftraw, but much moie rigid and firm. It is round, jointed, and not folid, but has a cavity in it filled with a central pith like that of our common rufhes. Its colour is yellowifh at the bafe, or to- ward the root, but toward the top it is purplifh or green- lin ; it is very light, yet confiderably hard, and is of a fra- grant or aromatic fmell, in which we may difcover fome- trang of a mixed fcent, between that of the rofe and penny- royal. Its tafte is acrid and bitterifh, but not Unpleafant. It mould be chofen frefh, found, and clean, not dnfty or decayed, of a good fmell and ftrong acrid tafte. HiiL Hift. Mat Med. p. 413,

1 he word fcbanantb fignifying the flower of the rufli, might naturally le^d us to ftlppofe, that what we now re- ceive under that name, is not the drug that was fo called by the antient Greeks and Romans, and fome have very vigoroufly fupported this opinion. But On enquiry in- to the Grecian materia medica, we find that hone of their fcbanantb had flowers on it any more than ours. Among the moderns, Garcias tells us, that though he bought up vaft quantities of this drug in the Indies to fend into Portu- gal, he never faw fo much as one flower upon any of it ; and among the antients Galen makes the very fame obfer- vation. He fays he wonders how this drug obtained the name of fcamar.th, for that he never met with any one piece that had a flower upon it. The reafon alledecd for this is very frivolous and trifling ; namely, that the camels of that part of the world where it grew, cropped off the tops, and with them the flowers ; but among the vaft quantities of this drug, at one time or other fent, there would be found fome that had efcaped the mouths of thefe creatures, and have preferved its fine flowers, had it any fuch as are afcribed to it ; fo that ihe opinion advanced, by fome, of its having flowers like rofes, is wholly falfe and groundlefs. Anthos was a word ufed by the Greeks, as its Englifh flow- er^ is, to fignify the moft perfefl, or beft of any kind of thing. We call the fineft fpecies of any thing the flower of it, and thus they called the fineft gold the anthos and anthimion of gold, in the fame manner this rufh was called fcanantb, or the flower of rufhes, not for its being full of flowers, but for being the moft excellent and valuable of all kinds of rufhes.

The very oldeft among the Greek writers do not ufe the term fcanantb, but they call this drug juncus aromaticus, or juncus odoratus, ^.,«. *' f « F »T.«o», and o- x ,im iouit. are the names it goes by. Hippocrates calls it by the latter of thefs names ; and Mcleager, though he mentions it as an herb to be put into the poets crowns, yet fays nothing of any flow- ers it has, but recommends it for its fragrant fmell. The antients ufed the whole plant in medicine, ftalk, leaves, and flowers ; its virtue refiding pretty equally in every part of it, as is manifeft from every part's poffeffing the fame fmell and tafte, and having the fame pungency in the mouth. They prefcribed it as a deobftruent and promoter of the menfes, but at prefent it is never heard of in extemporane- ous prefcription, only kept as an ingredient in fome compo- fitions. Id. ibid.

SCALARE, in natural hiftory, a name given by Rumphius to a peculiar fpecies of turbo, or fcmujliell ; the feveral wreaths of which having an opening between them form an ooen fpiral. See Turbo.

SCALE, {Cycl.) — Many have been the difputes among an- tient and modern muficians, about the conftitution of mu- fical fcalts. Some of the antients, with Euclid, will have it compofed of tones major, and Iimma's ; fo that the feven intervals of an octave would he thus exprelTed, f, §|§, £ |., Hi- h i- Some modern authors have from hence inferred the imperfeaion of the Greek unite. They alledge, we here find the ditonus, or an interval equal to two tones V y y major