Essence.
Black hellebore, used in medicine, is small pieces of hellebore roots. Its causticity is greater than the causticity of white. People who collect it eat garlic and drink wine to protect themselves from its harmful effects. The leaves of this plant are similar to those of the sycamore tree, but they are darker. Its stem is short, with a purple tint, and the shape of the plant is grape-shaped, and the cluster contains a fruit. Hellebore has thin black roots emerging from one rhizome, like the head of an onion, and only these roots are used. Hellebore grows in dry places.
Choice.
The best hellebore is medium: neither young nor old, neither fat nor skinny. It is ashen in color, breaks easily, is not too dense, and inside it there is something like a cobweb; it tastes sharp and stings the tongue. A good way to use it is to take the small petioles growing at the root, moisten them with a little water, peel them, dry them in the shade and consume them by grinding and sifting. They give you three karamas to drink at one time. It is best to give them to drink with celery and carrot seeds. They are sometimes given to drink up to one darakhmi.
Nature.
Hot, dry in the third degree.
Actions and properties.
This medicine dissolves, thins and strongly cleanses, so that it even eats up dead meat. If ice cream grows near the root of a vine, the power of the wine from it becomes laxative. One of the properties of hellebore is that it changes the nature of the body and makes it renewed, youthful. Often the patient takes hellebore to vomit, and it does not cause either vomiting or weakness, but produces the same effect as vomiting and weakness. It is suitable for men and masculine women, as well as for strong men and young men with a body rich in juices and more full-blooded, but not suitable for people who are plump and loose. It is better to take it in the month of Nissan, and then in Tishrin, but only before that you should avoid coarse food and thick drinks for three days and indulge in entertainment and amusements. After evening prayer, the patient should induce vomiting two or three times and then take hellebore.
Cosmetics.
Hellebore with vinegar is used for bahak and vadakh. It reduces warts; Baras helps them defecate. White hellebore works the same way.
Wounds and ulcers.
Black hellebore and white hellebore are used with milk for jarab, and with vinegar for lichen; with peeling, ointment from it and emptying with its help help. With hardened fistulas, hellebore opens the hardening. A kind of wick is made from it, which is put into the fistula and left there for several days. When the wick is removed, it turns out that the hellebore has torn off the hardening with its burning power.
Tools with joints.
Hellebore helps against paralysis and joint pain. Drinking hellebore is a powerful remedy for all this.
Organs of the head.
If you boil hellebore in vinegar and put it in the ear, it calms tinnitus, and if you rinse your mouth with vinegar, it stops toothache. If you drip a decoction of it into a hearing-impaired ear, it strengthens hearing and helps against obsession, chronic migraine, epilepsy, melancholy and all diseases of the head.
Organs of the eye.
It strengthens vision when included in eye medications.
Eruption organs.
It is useful in the overflow of black bile and its predominance and removes it from the whole body without discomfort. It also removes yellow bile and mucus and removes any excess admixed with the blood from the remotest parts of the body and from the skin. For quick relief, it should be placed in a medicine with scammonium, adding celery and carrot seeds to it. Sometimes they drink hellebore after first soaking it in shikanjubin or sweet wine and keeping it like that for some time. Then this wine is boiled with lentils, barley or chicken and the broth is sipped. Sometimes three obols of scammonium are mixed with one hellebore darakhmi and boiled with lentils. In the “Properties” section, instructions on its use have already been mentioned, which should be kept in mind in this case as well. Hellebore is very useful for tumors in the intestines and bladder and drives menstruation and urine.
Substitutes.
A substitute for black hellebore is half the weight of wolf's bast and one-third the weight of agaric. Ibn Masawayh mentions that his replacement is Qachim.