The "Cyranides" begins by instructing the reader to keep its contents secret, and with a fictional narrative of how the work was discovered. In one 15th-century manuscript, the author of the work is said to be Kyranos (Κοίρανος), king of Persia. The "Cyranides" devotes a chapter to the healing powers of the water snake; its bezoar is used to cure dropsy. Fish gall is recommended for healing white spots in the eye; fish liver is supposed to cure blindness. For a "large and pleasurable" erection, a mixture of arugula, spices, and honey is recommended, as is carrying the tail of a lizard or the right molar of a skink. The fumigation or wearing of bear hair turns away evil spirits and fever. Daniel Ogden, a specialist in magic and the supernatural in antiquity, has gathered several references from the "Cyranides" on the use of gemstones and amulets. The collection offers spells to avert the child-harming demon Gello, who was blamed for miscarriages and infant mortality, and says that aetite can be worn as an amulet against miscarriage. Olympidorus provides a summary of a passage from the work, not part of the abridged version now extant, that has cosmological as well as alchemical implications:  In the extant version, the "Cyranides" contains a description of the "heliodromus", a phoenix-like bird from India which, upon hatching, flies to the rising sun and then goes west when the sun passes the zenith. It lives only a year, and, according to some interpretations of an unreliable text, leaves behind an androgynous progeny.