حَنْظَلٌ
Root: حنظل
Full Definition
حَنْظَلٌ
[The colocynth; cucumis colocynthis;] a certain bitter plant; [and its fruit;] well known; i. q.
شَرْىٌ: n. un. with ة: [accord. to Freytag applied also to the momordica elaterium, or cucumis prophetarum:] there is a male species, and a female; the former fibrous; the latter soft, or easily broken, white, and easy to swallow: the choice sort of it is the yellow; or, accord. to the “ Kánoon ” of the Ra-ees [Ibn-Seenà, from which the description of its properties and uses, in the K and TA, is, with some slight variations, taken], the white, very white, and soft; for the black and the hard are bad, and it is not plucked until it becomes yellow, and the greenness has completely gone from it; its pulp attenuates the thick phlegmatic humour that flows upon the joints and tendons, when swallowed in the dose of of twelve keeráts, or used in the manner of a cluster: it is beneficial for melancholy, and epilepsy, and the [sort of doting termed] وَسْوَاس, and alopecia (دَآء الثَّعْلَب), and elephantiasis (الجُذَام), and [the disease of the tumid leg, termed] دَآء الفِيل; for these three used by rubbing; and for the cold
نِقْرِس [i. e. arthritis, or gout], and for the bite of vipers, and the sting of scorpions, especially its root; for this last being the most beneficial of medicines; a drachm of its root, administered to an Arab stung by a scorpion in four places, being said to have cured him on the spot: that which is plucked green relaxes [the bowels] excessively, and produces excessive vomiting: so in the “ Kánoon: ” it is also beneficial for the tooth-ache, by fumigating with its seeds; and for killing fleas, by sprinkling what is cooked thereof; and for the sciatica, by rubbing with what is green thereof: its root is cooked with vinegar, and one rinses the mouth with it for the tooth-ache; and the vinegar is cooked in it in hot ashes: when cooked in olive-oil, that oil, being dropped [into the ear-hole], is beneficial for ringing in the ears: it is beneficial also for the moist and flatulent colic: and sometimes it attenuates the blood: administered as a suppository in the vagina, it kills the fœtus: when the plant bears a single fruit, this is very deadly. [See also هَبِيدٌ.] Accord. to [many of] the leading authorities among the Arabs, the ن in this word is augmentative; because of their saying, حَظِلَ البَعِيرُ, meaning “ the camel became sick from eating حَنْظَل; ” and J and Sgh [and Fei and others] have mentioned it in art. حظل: but ISd says that this is not an evidence of its being radically triliteral; and that حَظِلَ is
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