ALDER (PRINOS VERTICILLATUS)
    COMMON NAME.  Winterberry.
    MEDICINAL PARTS.  The bark and berries.
    Description. -- This is an indigenous shrub of irregular growth, with a stem six or eight feet in height; bark grayish and alternate branches.  The leaves are ovate, acute at the base, olive green in color, smooth above and downy beneath.  Flowers small and white; calyx small and six-cleft; corolla divided into six obtuse segments.  Fruit a berry.
    History. -- Black Alder is comon throughout the United States and England, growing in moist woods, swamps, etc., flowering from May to July, and maturing its fruit in the latter part of autumn.  It yields its virtues to water by decoction or infusion.  The bark has a bitterish, sub-astringent taste, and the berries have a sweetish taste.
    Properties and Uses. -- It is tonic, alterative, and astringent.  It is very beneficial in jaundice, diarrhoea, gangrene, dropsy, and all diseases attended with great weakness.  Two drachms of the powdered bark and one drachm of powdered golden seal infused in a pint of boiling water, and, when cold, taken in the course of the day, in doses of a wineglassful, and repeated daily, has proved very efficacious in dyspepsia.  Externally the decoction forms an excellent local application in gangrene, indolent ulcers, and some affections of the skin.  The berries are cathartic and vermifuge, and form, with cedar apples, a pleasant and effectual worm medicine for children.
    Dose. -- Powdered bark, half a drachm to a drachm; decoction, a teaspoonful three or four tims a day.
 
ALE HOOF (NEPETA GLECHOMA)
    COMMON NAMES. -- Gill-go-by-the-ground, Ground Ivy, Cat's-Foot, Turnhoof, etc.
    MEDICINAL PART.  The leaves.
    Description. -- This plant is a perennial gray, hairy herb, with a procumbent creeping stem, varying in length from a few inches to one or two feet.  The leaves have petioles, cordate, and hairy on both sides.  The flowers are bluish purple.  The corolla is about three times as long as the calyx.
    History. -- This plant is common to the United States and Europe, where it is found in shady places, waste grounds, dry ditches, etc.  It flowers in May or August.  The leaves impart their virtues to boiling water by infusion.  They have an unpleasant odor, and a harsh, bitterish, slightly aromatic taste.
    Properties and Uses. -- It is stimulant, tonic, and pectoral, and is useful in diseases of the lungs and kidneys, asthma, jaundice, hypochondria, and monomania.  An infusion of the leaves is very beneficial in lead-colic, and painters who make use of it are seldom, if ever, troubled with that affection.  The fresh juice snuffed up the nose often cures the most inveterate headache.
    Dose. -- Powder, half a drachm to a drachm; infusion, one or two fluid ounces.
 
ALL-HEAL (PRUNELLA VULGARIS)
    COMMON NAMES.  Hercules Wound Wort, Panay, etc.
    MEDICINAL PART.  The root.
    Description. -- This shrub sometimes attains the height of five feet, but is usually much smaller.  The stem is strong and round, with many joints, with some leaves thereat.  The leaves consist of five or six pair of wings, and when chewed have a bitterish taste.  The root is thick and long, the juice of which is hot and biting.  The flower is a small and yellow one, and the seeds whitish yellow, short and flat.
    History. -- This plant is found in England and other parts of Europe.  In England it flowers usually until the end of summer, but in other parts of Europe it flowers from May to December.
    Properties and Uses. -- All-heal is a pungent and bitter tonic and antispasmodic.  It has also vermifuge properties, and is slightly diuretic.  It is excellent for cramps, fits, falling sickness, convulsions, etc. (inferior, however, to Blue Vervain).  In obstructions of the liver it serves a good purpose.  It sometimes cures the toothache by inserting cotton saturated with the juice into the decayed places of the teeth.
 
ALMONDS (AMYGDALUS COMMUNIS)
    AMYGDALA AMARA, Bitter Almonds; AMYGDALA DULCIS, Sweet Almonds.
    MEDICINAL PART.  The kernels.
    Description. -- The almond tree is from ten to eighteen feet high, with a pale-brown rugged bark, and dividing into many branches.  The leaves are of a bright light green, two to four inches long, and about three-fourths of an inch wide.  Flowers are moderately large, pink or white, sessile, in pairs, and appearing before the leaves.  Calyx reddish, petals variable in size.  The fruit is a hoary drupe; stone oblong or ovate, hard in various degrees, always rugged and pitted with irregular holes.  Both the bitter and sweet almonds come from this tree.
    History. -- The almond tree is indigenous to most of the southern parts of Asia and Barbary, but is cultivated in Southern Europe.  The best of the sweet kind comes from Malaga.  The sweet kernel is without odor, and of a pleasant flavor; that of the bitter is also inodorous, unless rubbed with water, when it exhales a smell similar to Prussic acid.  Its taste is similar to that of peach-meats.  Both varieties contain oil -- the sweet a fixed oil, the bitter both a fixed and an essential oil, impregnated with Prussic acid.  The oil of bitter almonds has a golden color, an agreeable odor, an acid bitter taste, combustible, and is a poison acting in the same manner as Prussic acid.  One drachm of this oil, dissolved in three drachms of alcohol, forms the "essence of almonds" much used by confectioners, perfumers, etc.  The oil is also much used by soap-makers.
    Properties and Uses. -- Triturated with water, sweet almonds produce a white mixture called emulsion, or milk of almonds, bearing a remarkable analogy with animal milk.  It is used as a demulcent and vehicle for other medicines.  The oil is demulcent in small quantity, in larger doses laxative.  It is frequently employed in cough, diseases dependent upon intestinal irritation, and for mitigating acrimonious urine in calculous affections.
    Dose. -- Of the oil, a teaspoonful.
 
ALNUS RUBRA (TAG ALDER)
    COMMON NAMES.  Common Alder, Smooth Alder.
    MEDICINAL PART.  The bark.
    Description. -- This is a well-known shrub, growing in clumps, and forming thickets on the borders of ponds and rivers, and in swamps.  The stems are numerous, and from six to fifteen feet high.  The leaves are obovate, acuminate, smooth, and green, from two to four inches long.
    History. -- The Alnus Rubra is indigenous to Europe and America, and blossoms in March and April.  The bark is the part used medicinally.
    Properties and Uses. -- The bark is universally acknowledged to be alterative and emetic, and is especially recommended for scrofula, secondary syphilis (inferior, however, to Rock Rose or Stillingia), and cutaneous diseases, of which there are many varieties, some of which have and some of which have not been classified.  The active principle of Alnus Rubra, as prepared for practitioners, is called Alnuin, and is most excellent in cases of dyspepsia produced by inactivity of the gastric glands.
 
AMARANTH (AMARANTHUS HYPOCHONDRIASES)
    COMMON NAMES.  Prince's Feather, Red Cock's Comb, etc.
    MEDICINAL PART.  The leaves.
    Description. -- This is an annual herb, with a stout upright stem, from three to four feet high.  The leaves are oblong, lanceolate, mucronate, green, with a red purplish spot, clustered flowers, five stamens.
    History. -- This plant is a native of the Middle States, where it is cultivated in gardens as an ornamental plant, but contains more medicinal virtues in its wild state.  It flowers in August.  The leaves impart their virtues to water.
    Properties and Uses. -- Amaranth is astringent.  The decoction drank freely is a valuable domestic remedy for menorrhagia, diarrhoea, dysentery, and hemorrhage from the bowels.  It is useful as a local application to ulcers of the mouth and throat, as an injection for leucorrhoea, and as a wash to foul, indolent ulcers.
 
ANEMONE (ANEMONE NEMOROSA)
    COMMON NAME.  Wind Flower.
    MEDICINAL PARTS.  Root, herb, and seed.
    Description. -- This is a delicate and pretty plant, with a creeping root, simple erect stem, six to nine inches high, bearing but a single flower; leaves ternate; sepals, four to six; stamens and ovaries numerous.
    History. -- This plant is common to Europe and the United States, bearing purplish and white flowers in April and May.  The Meadow Anemone of Europe is the most active in its medicinal qualities.  Its active principle is called Anemonine.  This plant affords the Pulsatilla of the Homoeopaths.
    Properties and Uses. -- Anemone in solution has been applied externally to scald head, ulcers, syphilitic nodes, paralysis, cataract, and opacity of the cornea, with benefit.  A decoction is sometimes used as an emmenagogue for secondary syphilis, whooping-cough, etc.  The leaves, fresh and bruised, act as a rubefacient.  Care should be taken in its internal administration, as it is acrid and poisonous.
    A plant of the same family, Anemone Cylindrica, is used by the Indians for the cure of the rattle-snake bite.  They chew some of the tops of the plant, swallowing but little of the saliva, then apply it to the bite; in a few minutes the bite is rendered harmless.
    Dose. -- Decoction, a tablespoonful; anemonine, one grain.
 
ANGELICA (ANGELICA ATROPURPUREA)
    COMMON NAME.  Masterwort.
    MEDICINAL PART. Root, herb, and seed.
    Description. -- This plant is five or six feet high.  The root has a purple color; leaves ternate, with large petioles; calyx five-toothed, with equal petals, and the fruit a nut.
    History. -- The plant is perennial, and grows in fields and damp places, developing greenish-white flowers from May to August.  The plant has a powerful, peculiar, but not unpleasant odor, a sweet taste, afterwards pungent; but in drying it loses much of these qualities.
    Properties and Uses. -- It is aromatic, stimulant, carminative, diaphoretic, expectorant, diuretic, and emmenagogue.  It is used in flatulent colic and heart-burn.  It is serviceable in diseases of the urinary organs.  The A. Archangelica, or Archangel, may be substituted for this.
    Dose. -- Decoction, two to four ounces; powder, thirty to sixty grains.
 
ANISE (PIMPINELLA ANISUM)
    COMMON NAME.  Aniseed.
    MEDICINAL PART.  The fruit.
    Description. -- Anise has a perennial, spindle-shaped, woody root, and a smooth erect, branched stem, about ten or twelve inches in height.  The leaves are petiolated, roundish, cordate, serrate; flowers small and white, disposed on long stalks.  Calyx wanting, or minute.  The fruit is ovate, about an eighth of an inch long, dull brown, and slightly downy.
    History. -- It is a native of Egypt, but now cultivated in many of the warm countries of Europe.  The Spanish Aniseed is commonly used for medicinal purposes.  The odor of anise is penetrating and fragrant, the taste aromatic and sweetish.  It imparts its virtues wholly to alcohol, only partially to water.  That used in cordials is the Star Anise, which is procured from the Illicium Anisatum, a plant of Eastern Asia.  Its volatile oil is often fraudulently substituted for the European oil of anise.
    Properties and Uses. -- Stimulant and carminative; used in cases of flatulency, colic of infants, and to remove nausea.  Sometimes added to other medicines to improve their flavor or to correct disagreeable effects.
    Dose. -- Of the seed, twenty to forty grains; essence, thirty drops to a teaspoonful.
 
ALOES (ALOE SPICATA)
    MEDICINAL PART.  The inspissated juice of the leaves.
    Description. -- The spiked aloe is an inhabitant of the southern parts of Africa, growing in sandy soil.  The stem is woody, round, and about four feet high, and from three to five inches in diameter.  The leaves are thick and fleshy, with a few white spots.  Spike a foot long; flowers scarlet, and filled with purplish honey.  This tree furnishes the Cape Aloes of commerce.  There are other varieties, the A. Socotrina and the A. Vulgaris.  The Socotrine aloes is an inhabitant of Socotra, and the Aloe Vulgaris is generally found in the East Indies and Barbary.
    History. -- Aloes is of a deep brown or olive color; odor unpleasant, taste peculiar and bitter, powder a bright yellow.  These properties change somewhat in the different varieties.  It is almost completely dissolved in water.
    Properties and Uses. -- Aloes is tonic, purgative, emmenagogue, and anthelmintic.  As a laxative its applications are limitless.  It acts chiefly upon the rectum, causing heat and irritation about the anus; it is therefore improper, unless associated with other medicines, to give it to patients suffering with piles.  It promotes the menstrual flow, but when used for this purpose it had better be combined with myrrh.  Its chief use is as a purgative, and it should never be given in inflammatory affections, in gastritis or enteritis, or to females liable to sudden uterine evacuation, or during pregnancy.
    Dose. -- Two to ten grains in pill.
 
ASARABACCA (ASARUM EUROPAEUM)
    COMMON NAMES.  Hazlewort, or Wild Nard.
    MEDICINAL PARTS.  Root and leaves.
    Description. -- The stem of this plant is very short, simple round and herbaceous, bearing dark-green reniform leaves; also one drooping flower of purple color, without corolla.  The fruit is a capsule.
    History. -- This is a European plant, growing in moist hilly woods, and flowers from May to August.  The root, when dried, has a pepper-like odor, spicy taste, and yields an ash-colored powder; the leaves give a green powder, and have the same medicinal properties as of the root.  They impart their virtues to water or alcohol.
    Properties and Uses. -- Emetic, cathartic, and errhine.  Used principally as an errhine in certain affections of the brain, eyes, face, and throat, toothache, and paralysis of the mouth and tongue.  It is used by drunkards in France to promote vomiting.
    Dose. -- Powder, 10 or 12 grains; as an emetic, from one-half to one drachm.
 
AYA-PANA (AYA-PANA EUPATORIUM)
    MEDICINAL PARTS.  The whole plant.
    Description. -- While traveling in Paraguay, South America, some years ago, I became acquainted with a species of Eupatorium or Lungwort called Aya-pana, possessed of most extraordinary virtues in consumption and other diseases of the chest.  In Paraguay, which is a very paradise on earth, numerous medicinal herbs of exceeding great value grow to the greatest perfection.  The Aya-pana belongs to the class of Eupatorium Perfoliatum, though quite unlike the Lungwort and Thorough-wort, indigenous to North America.  The Aya-pana is only found on the eastern slope of the Andes, on the mountain sides, along the sunny banks of streams, and beautifully luxuriant on all the tributaries to the Amazon, and La Plata especially.  It is a perennial plant, with numerous erect, round, hairy stems, five to ten feet high, the stalk plain below, but branching out in numerous stems near the top.  The leaves grow on the opposite sides of the base.  The direction of each pair of leaves is at right angles with that of the pair either above or beneath.  The leaves are long and narrow, broadest at the base where they coalesce, gradually tapering to a serrated point, wrinkled, palish green on the under surface, and beset with white silken hairs, which add much effect to their greenish-gray color.  The flowers are snow-white, slightly tinged with a purplish hue at the end, very numerous, supported on hairy peduncles.  The calyx is cylindrical, and composed of imbricated, lanceolate, hairy scales, inclosing from twelve to fifteen tubular florets, having their border divided into five spreading segments.  There are five black anthers united in a tube, through which a bifid filiform style projects above the flower, rendering the whole a beautiful and picturesque plant.
    History. -- It flowers constantly during the dry or sunny season, the blossoms and leaves being only used for medicinal purposes.  The flowers are better than the leaves, have an aromatic odor, resembling slightly chamomile, and possess a strong bitter taste, somewhat like horehound or quassia, which virtue is imparted either to water or alcohol.  Resin, gum, balsam, and mucilage are among the principal constituents of the flowers.  The flowers are gathered in the morning on sunny days, carefully dried in the sun or by artificial heat, when they are put up in bags or cedar boxes, and become ready for medicinal use.  Prepared in this way, the flowers and leaves retain their properties for years, improving in their virtues by age, adding to their rich honey-like yellow coloring matter when distilled for medical purposes.
    Properties and Uses. -- This plant may rightly be regarded as a specific in all forms of pulmonary and bronchial affections.  It has also great influence over the valvular action of the heart, in its healthful invigoration of the arterial and venous systems, and its wonderful power in expelling carbonic acid from the air-cells and pulmonary vessels, prior to the elimination of rich vermilion blood through the great aorta of the human economy.
    It is one of the ingredients of my "Acacian Balsam" (see page 469), which, with various other remarkable medicinal agents, forms one of the most wonderful remedies for coughs, colds, and consumption ever compounded.  The plant is not much known in this country, and only imported by myself, and can consequently not be had in apothecaries.
 
BALM (MELISSA OFFICINALIS)
    MEDICINAL PART.  The herb.
    Description. -- Balm is a perennial herb, with upright, branching, four-sided stems, from ten to twnty inches high.  The leaves are broadly ovate, acute, and more or less hairy.  The flowers are pale yellow, with ascending stamens.
    History. -- Balm is a native of France, but naturalized in England and the United States.  It grows in fields, along road-sides, and is well known as a garden plant, flowering from May to August.  The whole plant is officinal or medicinal, and should be collected previous to flowering.  In a fresh state it has a lemon-like odor, which is nearly lost by drying. Its taste is aromatic, faintly astringent, with a degree of persistent bitterness.  Boiling water extracts its virtues.  Balm contains a bitter extractive substance, a little tannin, gum, and a peculiar volatile oil.  A pound of the plant yields about four grains of the oil, which is of a yellowish or reddish-yellow color, very liquid, and possessing the fragrance of the plant in a high degree.  The Nepeta Citriodora, a powerful emmenagogue, is sometimes cultivated and employed by mistake for Balm.  It has the same odor, but may be distinguished by having both surfaces of the leaves hairy.
    Properties and Uses. -- It is moderately stimulant, diaphoretic, and antispasmodic.  A warm infusion, drank freely, is very serviceable to produce sweating, or as a diaphoretic in fevers.  It is also very useful in painful menstruation, and also to assist the courses of females.  When given in fevers, it may be rendered more agreeable by the addition of lemon juice.  The infusion may be taken at pleasure.
 
BALMONY (CHELONE GLARRA)
    COMMON NAMES.  Snake head, Turtle bloom, Saltyrheum weed.
    MEDICINAL PART.  The leaves.
    Description. -- This is a perennial, smooth, herbaceous plant, with simple erect stem about two or three feet high.  The leaves are opposite, sessile, oblong-lanceolate, acuminate, serrate, and of a dark shiing green color.  The fruit is a capsule.
    History. -- This valuable medical plant is found in the United States, in damp soils, flowering in August and September.  The flowers are ornamental, and vary in color according to the variety of the plant.  The leaves are exceedingly bitter, but inodorous, and impart their virtues to water and alcohol.
    Properties and Uses. -- It is tonic, cathartic, and anthelmintic; very valuable in jaundice, liver diseases, and for the removal of worms.  In small doses it is a good tonic in dyspepsia, debility of the digestive organs, and during convalescence from febrile and inflammatory diseases.  An ointment made from the fresh leaves is valuable for piles, inflamed breasts, tumors, and painful ulcers.
    Dose. -- Of the powdered leaves, one drachm; of the tincture, one or two teaspoonsful; of the active principle, Chelonia, one or two grains.
 
BARBERRY (BERBERIS VULGARIS)
    MEDICINAL PART.  Bark and berries.
    Description. -- Barberry is an erect, deciduous shrub, from three to eight feet high, with leaves of an obovate-oval form, terminated by soft bristles, about two inches long, and one-third as wide.  The flowers are small and yellow, in clusters, and the fruit bright-red oblong berries, in branches, and very acid.
    History. -- This shrub is found in the New England States, on the mountains of Pennsylvania and Virginia, among rocks and hard gravelly soil.  Occasionally it is found in the West on rich grounds.  It flowers in April and May, and ripens its fruit in June.  Its active principle is Berberina.
    Properties and Uses. -- It is tonic and laxative, indicated in jaundice, chronic diarrhoea, and dysentery.  The berries form an agreeable acidulous draught, useful as a refrigerant in fevers; the bark is bitter and astringent, and used in the treatment of jaundice.  The bark of the root is the most active; a teaspoonful of the powder will act as a purgative.  A decoction of the bark or berries will be found of service as a wash or gargle in aphthous sore mouth and chronic ophthalmia.
 
BAYBERRY (MYRICA CERIFERA)
    COMMON NAME.  Wax Myrtle.
    MEDICINAL PART.  The bark of the root.
    Description. -- This shrub is branching and partially evergreen, and varies in height from two to a dozen feet.  The flowers appear in May, before the leaves are fully expanded.  The fruits are small and globular, resembling berries, which are at first green, but become nearly white.  They consist of a hard stone, inclosing a two-lobed and two-seeded kernel.  On the outside of the stone are gunpowder-like grains, and over these is a crust of dry greenish-white wax.
    History. -- Bayberry is found in woods and fields, from Canada to Florida.  The bark of the root is the officinal part, but the wax is also used.  Water must be employed to extract the astringent principles of the root-bark, alcohol to extract its stimulating virtues.  The period at which the root should be collected is the latter part of fall.  Cleanse it thoroughly, and while fresh separate the bark with a hammer or club.  Dry the bark thoroughly and keep it in a dry place; then pulverize, and keep the powder in dark and sealed vessels.  In order to obtain the wax, boil the berries in water; the wax will soon float on the surface, and may be removed when it becomes cold and hardened.
    Properties and Uses. -- The bark has been successfully used in scrofula, jaundice, diarrhoea, dysentery, and in other cases where astringent stimulants were indicated.  Powdered, it has been employed as a snuff, with curative effect, in catarrh of the head and nasal polypus.  It is sometimes applied, in poultice form, to old ulcers, sores, tumors, etc.; but is better for these when combined with Bloodroot.  The wax possesses mild astringent with narcotic properties.  The real properties of Bayberry bark are found in a preparation called Myricin, which is a stimulant and astringent, and can be employed to the best advantage in dysentery with typhoid symptoms, chronic diarrhoea, scrofula, and follicular stomatitis.  Its greatest and most salutary influence is exerted over a diseased condition of the mucous surface.  Myricin should be administered internally by the advice of a physician acquainted with its virtues.  It may be applied externally to sores, ulcers, etc., by anybody; but its immediate effects must be neutralized by a poultice of slippery elm.
 
BEARBERRY (ARCTOSTAPHYLOS UVA-URSI)
    COMMON NAME.  The upland Cranberry.
    MEDICINAL PART.  The Leaves.
    Description. -- Bearberry is a small, perennial, shrub, having a long fibrous root.  The stems are woody and trailing; bark smooth.  The leaves are alternate, evergreen, obovate, acute, and have short petioles.  The fruit is a small, scarlet-colored drupaceous berry.
    History. -- This plant is a perennial evergreen, common in the northern part of Europe and America.  It grows on dry, sterile, sandy soils, and gravelly ridges.  The berries ripen in winter, although the flowers appear from June to September.  The green leaves, picked from the stems in the fall and dried in a moderate heat, are the parts used.  These leaves are odorless until reduced to powder, when the odor emitted is like that of dried grass.  The powder is of a light brown color, tinged with a yellowish green.  The taste is astringent and bitterish.  The properties of the leaves are extracted by alcohol or water.  A preparation called Ursin is made from them.
    Properties and Uses. -- Uva Ursi is especially astringent and tonic, depending upon these qualities for the most of its good effects.  It is particularly useful in chronic diarrhoea, dysentery, profuse menstruation, piles, diabetes, and other similar complaints.  It possesses rare curative principles when administered for diseases of the urinary organs, more especially in chronic affections of the kidneys, mucous discharges from the bladder, inflammation of the latter organ, and all derangements of the water-passages.  It is also a valuable assistant in the cure of gonorrhoea of long standing, whites, ulceration of the cervix uteri (or neck of the womb), pain in the vesical region, etc.  Many physicians now rely upon it as the basis of their remedy for gonorrhoea which is accompanied by mucous discharges, and for all kindred afflictions.  Its tannic acid gives it great power in rectifying and extirpating the obstinate and disagreeable complaints we have mentioned.
    Dose. -- The dose of the powder is ten to forty grains; of the decoction, one to two fluid ounces--(to make this, boil a pint and a half of pure water, containing one ounce of uva ursi, down to a pint); of the extract, five to ten grains.
 
BEARS BED (POLYTRICHIUM JUNIPERUM)
    COMMON NAMES.  Hair-cap Moss, Robin's Rye, Ground Moss.
    MEDICINAL PART.  The whole plant.
    Description. -- This is an indigenous plant, having a perennial stem, slender, of a reddish color, and from four to seven inches high; leaves lanceolate, and somewhat spreading.  The fruit a four-sided oblong capsule.
    History. -- This evergreen plant is found in high, dry places, along the margins of dry woods, mostly on poor sandy soil.  It is of darker green color than the mosses in general.  It yields its virtues to boiling water.
    Properties and Uses. -- This plant is not much known as a remedial agent, but is nevertheless a valuable remedy.  It is a powerful diuretic, and very serviceable in dropsy.  It is very useful in gravel and urinary obstructions.  It causes no nausea or disagreeable sensations in the stomach, and may be used with the hydragogue cathartics with decided advantage in dropsical affections.
 
BEAD TREE (MELIA AZEDARACH)
    COMMON NAME.  Pride of China.
    MEDICINAL PART.  The bark of the root.
    Description. -- This is an elegant tree, which attains the height of thirty or forty feet, with a trunk about a foot and a half in diameter.  The bark is rough; leaves bipinnate; flowers lilac color; calyx five-parted; corolla has five petals; stamens deep violet; anthers yellow.  The fruit is a five-celled bony nut.
    History. -- It is a native of China, but cultivated in the warm climates of Europe and America.  It does not grow to any extent north of Virginia, and flowers early in the spring.  Its name of Bead Tree is derived from the uses to which its hard nuts are put in Roman Catholic countries, viz., for making rosaries.  The recent bark of the root is the most active part for medicinal purposes.  It has a disagreeably bitter taste and a very unpleasant odor, and imparts its properties to boiling water.
    Properties and Uses. -- The bark is anthelmintic, and in large doses narcotic and emetic.  It is useful in worm fevers and in infantile remittents, in which, although worms are absent, yet the symptoms are similar to those accompanying the presence of worms.
    The fruit is somewhat saccharine, and is an excellent remedy to expel worms.  Its pulp is used as an ointment for destroying lice and other ectozoa, as well as in treatment of scald head and other diseases of the skin.  The oil of the nuts is useful as a local application in rheumatism, cramps, obstinate ulcers, etc.
    Dose. -- Of the powdered bark, twenty grains; of the decoction (which is the best form for administration--two ounces of the bark to a pint of water, and boiled down to a half a pint), a tablespoonful every one, two, or three hours, till the desired effect is obtained.  A purgative should follow its employment. -- See "Renovating Pill," page 469.
 
BELLADONNA (ATROPA BELLADONNA)
    COMMON NAMES.  Deadly Night-shade, Dwale, Black Cherry, etc.
    MEDICINAL PART.  The leaves.
    Description. -- This perennial herb has a thick, fleshy, creeping root, and an annual erect leafy stem about three feet high.  Leaves ovate, acute, entire, on short petioles, and of a dull green color.  The flowers are dark purple, and fruit a many-seeded berry.
    History. -- This plant is common to Europe, growing among ruins and waste places, blossoming from May to August, and maturing its fruit in September.  The leaves should be gathered while the plant is in flower.  They yield their virtues to water and alcohol.
    Properties and Uses. -- Belladonna is an energetic narcotic.  It is anodyne, antispasmodic, calmative, and relaxant; exceedingly valuable in all convulsive diseases.  It is much used as a preventive of scarlatina, and as a cure for whooping-cough.  It dilates the pupil of the eyes very measurably, and they should always be watched whenever the plant is administered.  In the hands of the educated herbal physician it is a very useful remedy; but I caution my readers not to use it in domestic practice.
 
BETH-ROOT (TRILLIUM PENDULUM)
    COMMON NAMES.  Wake Robin, Indian Balm, Ground Lily, etc.
    MEDICINAL PART.  The root.
    Description. -- This is an herbaceous, perennial plant, having an oblong tuberous root, from which arises a slender stem from ten to fifteen inches high.  The leaves are three in number, acuminate, from three to five inches in diameter, with a very short petiole.  The flowers are white, sepals green, petals ovate and acute, styles erect, and stigmas recurved.
    History. -- This plant is common in the Middle and Western States, growing in rich soils and shady woods, flowering in May and June.  There are many varieties, all possessing analogous medicinal properties.  These plants may be generally known by their three net-veined leaves, and their solitary terminal flower, which varies in color in the different species, being whitish-yellow and reddish-white.  The roots have a faint turpentine odor, and a peculiar aromatic and sweetish taste.  When chewed they impart an acid astringent impression to the mouth, causing a flow of saliva and a sensation of heat in the throat and fauces.  Trilline is its active principle.
    Properties and Uses. -- It is astringent, tonic, and antiseptic, and is successfully employed in bleeding from the lungs, kidneys and womb, excessive menstruation, and likewise in leucorrhoea or white, and cough, asthma, and difficult breathing.  Boiled in milk, it is of eminent benefit in diarrhoea and dysentery.  The root made into a poultice is very useful in tumors, indolent and offensive ulcers, stings of insects, and to restrain gangrene; and the leaves boiled in lard are a good application to ulcers, tumors, etc.  The red Beth-root will check ordinary epistaxis, or bleeding of the nose.  The leaves boiled in lard is a good external application in ulcers and tumors.  A strong infusion of powdered Beth-root, of from two to four tablespoonfuls, is the most pleasant form of administration of this valuable remedy.
    Dose of the powdered root is one drachm, to be given in hot water; of the infusion, two to four ounces.
 
BIRDS' NEST (MONOTROPA UNIFLORA)
    COMMON NAMES.  Ice Plant, Fit Plant, Ova-ova, Indian Pipe.
    MEDICINAL PART.  The root.
    Description. -- This plant has a dark-colored, fibrous, perennial root, matted in masses like a chestnut vine, from which arise one or more short ivory-white stems, four to eight inches high, adorned with white, sessile, lanceolate leaves.
    History. -- This singular plant is found from Maine to Carolina, and westward to Missouri, growing in shady, solitary places, in rich moist soil, or soil composed of decayed wood and leaves.  The whole plant is ivory-white, resembling frozen jelly, and when handled melts away like ice.  It flowers from June to September.  It is evidently a parasite of the roots at the base of trees.
    Properties and Uses. -- It is tonic, sedative, and antispasmodic.  It is useful in fevers, and employed in instances of restlessness, pains, nervous irritability, etc., in place of opium.  It cures remittent and intermittent fevers, and may be employed instead of quinine.  Prompt success has followed its use in convulsive diseases.  The juice of the plant mixed with rose-water forms an excellent application to sore eyes, or as an injection in gonorrhoea.  It is very singular that people will use injurious drugs, or permit themselves to take them, when in this queer little herb that grows all around them, and which by its singular character invites attention to it, they can find a sovereign remedy for numberless ills.
    Dose. -- Of the powdered root, half a drachm to a drachm, two or three times a day.
 
BITTER ROOT (APOCYNUM ANDROSAEMIFOLIUM)
    COMMON NAMES.  Dog's-bane, Milk-weed, etc.
    MEDICINAL PART.  The root.
    Description. -- This is a smooth, elegant plant, five or six feet high, with a large perennial root.  The leaves are dark-green above, pale beneath, ovate, and about two or three inches long and an inch wide.  Corolla white, calyx five-cleft, and stamens five.  Fruit a follicle.  Every part of the plant is milky.
    History. -- This plant is indigenous to the United States, growing in dry, sandy soils, and in the borders of woods, from Maine to Florida, flowering from May to August.  When any part of the plant is wounded a milky juice exudes.  The large, milky root is the part used for medicinal purposes.  It possesses an unpleasant amarous taste.  It yields its properties to alcohol, but especially to water.   Age impairs its medicinal quality.
    Properties and Uses. -- Emetic, diaphoretic, tonic, and laxative.  It is very valuable in all liver or chronic hepatic affections.  In conjunction with Menispermin, it is excellent in dyspepsia and amenorrhoea.  When it is required to promptly empty the stomach, without causing much nausea or a relaxed condition of the muscular system, the powdered root may be given in two or three scruple doses; but much prostration is apt to ensue.  As a laxative it is useful in constipation.  As a tonic, ten or twenty grains may be given to stimulate the digestive apparatus, and thus effect a corresponding impression on the general system.  It is also useful as an alterative in rheumatism, scrofula, and syphilis.
 
BITTER-SWEET (AMARA DULCIS, SOLANUM DULCAMARA)
    COMMON NAMES.  Mortal, Woody Nightshade, Falon Wort, etc.
    MEDICINAL PART.  Bark of root and twigs.
    Description. -- Bitter-Sweet is a woody vine, with a shrubby stem several feet in length, having an ashy green bark.  Leaves acute, and generally smooth, lower one cordate, upper ones hastate.  The flowers are purple, and the fruit a scarlet, juicy and bitter berry, which, however, should not be eaten or used.
    History. -- Bitter-Sweet is common to both Europe and America, growing in moist banks, around dwellings, and in low damp grounds, about hedges and thickets, and flowering in June and July.  The berries ripen in autumn, and hang upon the vines for several months.  After the foliage has fallen the twigs should be gathered.  Boiling water and dilute alcohol extract their virtues.
    Properties and Uses. -- It is a mild narcotic, diuretic, alterative, diaphoretic, and discutient.  It is serviceable in cutaneous diseases, syphilitic diseases, rheumatic and cachectic affections, ill-conditioned ulcers, scrofula, indurations, sores, glandular swelling, etc.  In obstructed menstruation it serves a good purpose.  It is of incalculable benefit in leprosy, tetter, and all skin diseases.  It excites the venereal functions, and is in fact capable of wide application and use.  I regard this plant as important as any in the herbal kingdom, and too little justice is done to it by those under whose care the sick are entrusted.  It receives but half the homage that is due to it.
    The world knows the virtues of my "Herbal Ointment" (see page 469), and which is in great measure due to Bitter-Sweet, as it is one of the ingredients.
    Dose. -- Of the decoction, one or two fluid ounces; extract, two to five grains; powdered leaves, ten to thirty grains.
 
BLUE FLAG (IRIS VERSICOLOR)
    MEDICINAL PART.  The rhizome.
    Description.  Blue Flag is an indigenous plant, with a fleshy, fibrous rhizome.  The stem is two or three feet in height, round on one side, acute on the other, and frequently branched.  The leaves are ensiform, about a foot long, half an inch to an inch wide.  The fruit a three-celled capsule.
    History.  Blue Flag is common throughout the United States, growing in moist places, and bearing blue or purple flowers from May to July.  The root has a peculiar odor, augmented by rubbing or pulverizing, and a disagreeable taste.  It imparts its virtues to boiling water, alcohol, or ether.  The root should be sliced transversely, dried, and placed in dark vessels, well closed, and placed in a dark place; it will then preserve its virtues for a long time.  The oleo-resin obtained from it is called Iridin, its active principle.
    Properties and Uses. -- This is one among our most valuable medicinal plants, capable of extensive use.  It is alterative, cathartic, sialogogue, vermifuge, and diuretic.  In scrofula and syphilis it acts as a powerful and efficient agent, and I employ it in my special treatment of chronic diseases extensively and successfully.  It is useful in chronic hepatic, renal, and splenitic affections, but had best be combined with mandrake, poke, black cohosh, etc.  It will sometimes salivate, but it need cause no apprehension; and when this effect is established, it may be distinguished from mercurial salivation by absence of stench, sponginess of the gums, and loosening of the teeth.
    Dose. -- Powdered root, five to ten grains; Iridin, one grain.
 
BLUE VERVAIN (VERBENA HASTATA)
    COMMON NAMES.  Wild Hyssop, Simpler's Joy.
    MEDICINAL PART.  The root and herb.
    Description. -- Vervain is an erect, tall, elegant, and perennial plant, with a four-angled stem three or four feet high, having opposite branches.  The leaves are petiolate, serrate, acuminate, and hastate.  The flower is a small purplish blue one, sessile, and arranged in long spikes.  Seeds, four.
    History. -- Vervain is indigenous to the United States, and grows along roadsides, and in dry, grassy fields, flowering from June to September.  It is also found in England, growing among hedges, by the way-side, and other waste grounds, flowering in July, and the seeds ripening soon after.
    Properties and Uses. -- Vervain is tonic, expectorant, sudorific, and antispasmodic.  It is serviceable in mismenstruation.  It is an antidote to poke-poisoning.  It expels worms, and is a capital agent for the cure of all diseases of the spleen and liver.  If given in intermittent fever, in a warm infusion or powder, it never fails to effect a cure.  In all cases of cold and obstinate menstruation it is a most complete and advantageous sudorific.  When the circulation of the blood is weak and languid, it will increase it and restore it to its proper operation.  The infusion, taken cold, forms a good tonic in cases of constitutional debility, and during convalescence from acute disease.  Its value has been found to be great in scrofula, visceral obstructions, and stone and gravel.  It will correct diseases of the stomach, help coughs, wheezing, and shortness of breath, etc., but its virtues are more wonderful still in the effect they produce upon epilepsy, or falling sickness, and fits.
    This great -- very great -- medicinal value of this plant was brought to my attention by an accidental knowledge of the good it had effected in a long-standing case of epilepsy.  Its effects in that case were of the most remarkable character, and I was, therefore, led to study most carefully and minutely its medicinal peculiarities.  I found, after close investigation and elaborate experiment, that, prepared in a certain way, and compounded with boneset, water-pepper, chamomile blossoms, and the best of whiskey, it has no equal for the cure of fits, or falling sickness, or anything like fits; also for indigestion, dyspepsia, and liver complaints of every grade.  A more valuable plant is not found within the whole range of the herbal pharmacopoeia.  See "Restorative Assimilant," page 469.
    The following application is singularly effective in promoting the absorption of the blood, effusion in bruises, and allaying the attendant pain: Take of Vervain, Senna, and White Pepper, of each equal parts; make a cataplasm or plaster by mixing with white of eggs.
    It is also most valuable as a cure for diarrhoea, stomachic and enteric pains, bowel complaints, and a superexcellent tonic.
 I first brought the notice of physicians to this plant about twelve years ago, previous to which it was unknown as a remedy, but which is now used by very many physicians, whose reports of its virtues in various medical journals, published works, and to me by correspondence, are as flattering as my own.
    Dose. -- Of the powdered root, from one to two scruples; the dose of the infusion is from two to four wine-glassfuls three or four times a day, if an emetic is desired.
 
BLACK COHOSH (CIMICIFUGA RACEMOSA)
    COMMON NAMES.  Rattleroot, Squaw Root, Black Snake Root.
    MEDICINAL PART.  The root.
    Description. -- This plant is a tall, leafy perennial herb, with a large knotty root, having long slender fibres.  The stem is simple, smooth, and furrowed, and from three to nine feet high.  The flower is a small and fetid one.
    History. -- It is a native of the United States, inhabiting upland woods and hillsides, and flowering from May to August.  The root is the medicinal part.  It contains a resin, to which the names of Cimicifugin or Macrotin have been given; likewise fatty substances, starch, gum, tannic acid, etc.  The leaves of Cimicifuga are said to drive away bugs; hence its name from cimez, a bug, and fugo, to drive away.
    Boiling water takes up the properties of the root but partially, alcohol wholly.
    Properties and Uses. -- It is a very active and useful remedy in many diseases.  It is slightly narcotic, sedative, antispasmodic, and exerts a marked influence over the nervous system.  It is successfully used in cholera, periodical convulsions, fits, epilepsy, nervous excitability, asthma, delirium tremens, and many spasmodic affections, and in consumption, cough, acute rheumatism, neuralgia, and scrofula.  Also, very valuable in amenorrhoea, dysmenorrhoea, and other menstrual and uterine affections, leucorrhoea, etc.  The saturated tincture of the root is a valuable embrocation in all cases of inflammation of the nerves, tic douloureux, crick in the back or sides, rheumatism, old ulcers, etc.  It has an especial affinity for the uterus, and as it reduces very materially the arterial action, it is, hence, very useful in palpitation of the heart, and cardiac affections generally.
    It exerts a tonic influence over mucous and serous tissues, and is a superior remedy in a variety of chronic diseases.  In my special practice I use it largely, and its use, in conjunction with other indicated remedies, has afforded me flattering success in many chronic affections.
    Dose. -- Fluid extract, half a drachm to two drachms; solid extract, four to eight grains; of the tincture the dose is from one to three teaspoonsful; of Cimicifugin the dose is from one to six grains.
 
BLAZING STAR (LIATRIS SQUARROSA)
    COMMON NAMES.  Gay Feather, Devil's Bit, etc.
    MEDICINAL PART.  The root.
    Description. -- There are three varieties of this plant used in medicine.  The above is the most common one.  It has a tuberous root, and an erect annual stem from two to five feet high, linear leaves, and flowers sessile, and of bright purple color.
    Liatris Spicata, or Button Snake Root, is very similar to the above.
    Liatris Scariosa, or Gay Feather, has a perennial tuberous root, with a stout stem from four to five feet high.  The leaves are numerous and lanceolate, lower one on long petioles.
    History. -- The two former are natives of the Middle and Southern States, and the latter is found from New England to Wisconsin.  These splendid natives flower from August to September.  The roots have a hot bitter taste and an agreeable turpentine odor.  The virtues are extracted by alcohol.
    Properties and Uses. -- These plants are diuretic, tonic, stimulant, and emmenagogue.  The decoction is very useful in gonorrhoea, gleet, and kidney diseases.  It is also of service in uterine diseases.  As a gargle in sore throat it is of great advantage.  These plants are used for, and said to have antidotal powers over snake-bites.
 
BONESET (EUPATORIUM PERFOLLIATUM)
    COMMON NAME.  Thoroughwort.
    MEDICINAL PARTS.  The tops and leaves.
    Description. -- Boneset is an indigenous perennial herb, with a horizontal crooked root, the stems being round, stout, rough and hairy, from one to five feet high, and the leaves veiny, serrate, rough, and tapering to a long point.  The flowers are white and very numerous.
    History. -- Boneset grows in low grounds, on the borders of swamps and streams, throughout the United States, flowering in August and September.  Alcohol or boiling water extracts the virtues of the parts used.  It has a feeble odor, but a very bitter taste.  It contains tannin and the extractive salts of potassa.  It is called Boneset on account that it was formerly supposed to cause rapid union of broken bones.
    Properties and Uses. -- It is a very valuable medicinal agent.  The cold infusion or extract is tonic and aperient, the warm infusion diaphoretic and emetic.  As a tonic it is very useful in remittent, intermittent, and typhoid fevers, dyspepsia, and general debility.  In intermittent fever a strong infusion, as hot as can be comfortably swallowed, is administered for the purpose of vomiting freely.  This is also attended with profuse diaphoresis, and sooner or later, by an evacuation of the bowels.  During the intermission the cold infusion or extract is given every hour as a tonic and antiperiodic.  In epidemic influenza the warm infusion is valuable as an emetic and diaphoretic, likewise in febrile diseases, catarrh, colds, and wherever such effects are indicated.  The warm infusion is also administered to promote the operation of other emetics.  Externally, used alone or in combination with hops or tansy, etc., a fomentation of the leaves applied to the bowels is very useful in inflammation, spasms, and painful affections.
    Boneset is one of the ingredients of my "Restorative Assimilant," and is certainly an excellent adjuvant to the Blue Vervain.  (See page 469.)
    Dose. -- Of the powder, from ten to twenty grains; of the extract, from two to four grains; of the infusion, from two to four wineglassfuls.
 
BLACK ROOT (LEFTANDEIA VIRGINICA)
    COMMON NAMES.  Culver's Physic, Tall Speedwell.
    MEDICINAL PART.  The root.
    Description. -- It is perennial, with a simple, straight, smooth, herbaceous stem, and grows from three to four or five feet in height.  The leaves are short petioled, whorled in fours to sevens, lanceolate, acuminnate, and finely serrated.  The flowers are white, nearly sessile, and very numerous.  Calyx four-parted corolla small and nearly white; stamens, two.  The fruit is a many-seeded capsule.
    History. -- This plant is indigenous to the United States, but is to be found in good condition only in limestone countries.  It is often discovered in new soil, in moist woods, in swamps, etc., but its medicinal virtues are feeble, excepting when it is found where there is limestone.  The root is the part used.  It is perennial, irregular, horizontal, woody, and about as thick as the forefinger.  It is gathered in the fall of the second year.  The fresh root should never be used, as it is very violent and uncertain in its operations.  The dried root, after having been properly prepared, is what may be relied upon for beneficial effects.  Leptandrin is its active principle.
    Properties and Uses. -- The fresh root is too irritant to be used, although a decoction of it may, with care, be used in intermittent fever.  The dried root is laxative, cholagogue, and tonic, and very much used in chronic hepatic diseases.  It is an excellent laxative in febrile diseases, and peculiarly applicable in billious and typhoid fevers.  As a laxative and tonic it is very useful in dyspepsia, especially when associated with torpidity of the liver.  In diarrhoea and dysentery, as a cathartic it frequently effects a cure in one active dose.  This admirable remedy is one of the ingredients of my "Renovating Pill," see page 469.
    Dose. -- Powdered root, twenty to sixty grains; infusion, half an ounce; leptandrin, one-fourth grain to a grain.
 
BLOODROOT (SANGUINARIA CANADENSIS)
    COMMON NAME.  Red Puccoon.
    MEDICINAL PART.  The root.
    Description. -- Bloodroot is a smooth, herbaceous, perennial plant, with a fibrous root, which when cut or bruised emits an orange-colored juice.  From each bud of the root stalk there springs a single leaf about six inches high, and which is cordate and reniform.  The flower is white, stamens short, and anthers yellow.  The fruit is a two-valved capsule.
    History. -- Bloodroot grows throughout the United States, in shaded woods and thickets, and rich soils generally, and flowers from March to June.  Although the whole plant is medicinal, the root is the part chiefly used.  The fresh root is fleshy, round, and from one to four inches in length, and as thick as the fingers.  It presents a beautiful appearance when cut and placed under a microscope, seeming like an aggregation of minute precious stones.  The dried root is dark brown outside, bright yellow inside; has a faint virose odor, and a bitter and acrid taste.  It may be readily reduced to powder.  Its active properties are taken up by boiling water or by alcohol.  Age and moisture impair the qualities of the root, and it is of the utmost consequence to get that which has been properly gathered, and not kept too long.  It yields several principles, among which are sanguinaria, puccine, chelidonic acid, a yellowish fixed oil, lignin, and gum.
    Properties and Uses. -- The actions of Bloodroot vary according to administration.  In small doses it stimulates the digestive organs, acting as a stimulant and tonic.  In large doses it is an arterial sedative.  It is useful in bronchitis, laryngitis, whooping-cough, and other affections of the respiratory organs.  It excites the energies of a torpid liver, and has proved beneficial in scrofula, amenorrhoea, and dysentery.  Applied to fungous growths, ulcers, fleshy excresences, cancerous affections, the powder acts as an escharotic, and the infusion is often applied with benefit to skin diseases.
 Dose.--Of the powder as an emetic, ten to twenty grains; as a stimulant and expectorant, three to five grains; as an alterative, half a grain to two grains.  Tincture, twenty to sixty drops.
 
BOX (BUXUS SEMPERVIRENS)
    MEDICINAL PART.  The leaves.
    Description. -- Box is a small, dense-leaved, hard-wood evergreen tree.  The leaves are ovate, deep shining green, becoming red in autumn; flowers pale yellow; and the fruit is six-seeded globular capsule.
    History. -- The box tree is a native of the west of Asia, but grows on dry hills and sandy elevations generally in Europe, and but rarely on similar soil in America.  A preparation called Buxina is obtained from the powdered bark, but the leaves are the parts mainly used in medical practice.  They readily impart their virtues to alcohol or water.
    Properties and Uses. -- It is cathartic, sudorific, and alterative.  The preparations of the leaves are excellent for the expulsion of worms, for purging the bowels, and regulating the action of the liver; for breaking fevers, and for purifying the blood and glandular secretions.  In syrup it is very valuable as a cure for all diseases of a syphilitic character, and may be used alone to great advantage, where the compound syrup of stillingia cannot be obtained.  The stillingia is preferable if it is at all to be had.  The dose of a strong decoction, or syrup, of box, is half a fluid ounce, three times a day.  In very severe cases the dose may be increased to a fluid ounce; but this should not be undertaken excepting by the advice of a physician.  When intestinal worms are to be destroyed or expelled, the powdered leaves are usually administered in, to children, doses of five grains; to adults, in doses of from ten to fifteen grains.  It possesses antispasmodic qualities, and has been given with good effect in hysteria, epilepsy, chorea (St. Vitus' Dance), etc.  Chips of the wood (decoction) are useful in chronic rheumatism.  The chief value of the Buxus Sempervirens, however, centres in its antisyphilitic virtues.  I combine it with corydalis (Turkey pea) and the compound syrup of stillingia, in such a manner that it will surely cure syphilis in the first, second, or third stage; also certain forms of scrofula and scurvy.  In other diseases it is no better than many other plants mentioned in this book.
    The reader will do well to remember that the common garden box possesses the medical qualities of the Buxus Sempervirens to a feeble extent only.  The powerful antisyphilitic virtues of which I have spoken can be procured only from the leaves of the tree reared in Asia, the influences of that climate being requisite to perfect them.
 
BUCHU (BAROSMA CRENATA)
    MEDICINAL PART.  The leaves.
    Description. -- This plant has a slender, smooth, upright, perennial stem, between two and three feet high.  The leaves are opposite, flat, about an inch long, ovate or obovate, acute, serrated, and dotted.  The flowers are pink, and fruit an ovate capsule.
    History. -- The Buchu plant is a native of Southern Africa.  It does not grow very prolifically.  There are two other varieties from which the leaves are taken, and which are of equal value with the Barosma Crenata.  The leaves are the parts which are termed officinal.  The Hottentots gather these leaves (which emit a sort of minty odor) and powder them.  "The powder," says a traveler, "they have named Booko, and they use it for anointing their bodies."  They also distil the leaves, and obtain from them a strong spirituous liquor somewhat resembling pale brandy, which they not only use for convivial purposes, but for the cure of various diseases, particularly those which are located in the stomach, bladder, bowels, and kidneys.  A decoction of the leaves is systematically applied by them, with success, we are told, to wounds; but this is an assertion of which we have no direct proof.  As we get them, the leaves are nearly, or quite, an inch in length, and from a sixth to half an inch in width, elliptical, lanceolate, slightly acute, or shorter and obtuse; their margin is serrated and glandular, upper surface smooth, and of a clear shining green, the under surface paler, with scattered oil points.  They taste and smell like pennyroyal; but are neither heating nor bitter when chewed.  They have to be kept very carefully, if their odor and virtues are desired to be thoroughly preserved for any reasonable length of time.  The leaves of all the varieties are somewhat similar, and possess about the same qualities.  They yield their volatile oil and extractive (upon which their virtues are mainly dependent) to alcohol or water.
    Properties and Uses. -- Buchu is aromatic and stimulant, diuretic and diaphoretic.  It is employed in dyspepsia with a palliative effect, but is chiefly administered in chronic inflammation of the bladder, irritation of the membrane of the urethra, uric acid gravel, diabetes in its first stage, and in incontinence of urine.  It is recommended, without good reason, for cutaneous and rheumatic affections.  I have no doubt Buchu is of some importance in chronic diseases of the urino-genital organs, for I have tried it; but I am sure that we have many native remedies which are altogether superior, and which are neglected only because the public is so familiar with them that they do not care to give them a fair trial.
    Dose. -- Of the powder, twenty to thirty grains; infusion, two to four ounces; tincture, one or two drachms; fl. extract, thirty to sixty drops.
 
BURNING BUSH (EUONYMUS ATROPURPUREUS)
    COMMON NAMES.  Wahoo, Spindle Tree, etc.
    MEDICINAL PART.  The bark of the root.
    Description. -- Wahoo is a small shrub or bush, with smooth branches, and from five to ten feet high.  The leaves are from two to five inches in length, lanceolate, acute, and finely serrate.  Flowers dark purple, and the fruit a crimson, five-celled capsule.  There is another variety known as Euonymus Americanus, which is equally useful medicinally, and this and the foregoing are both known by the name of Wahoo better than by any other title.
    History. -- These plants grow in many sections of the United States, in woods and thickets, and in river bottoms, flowering in June.  The bark of the root has a bitter and unpleasant taste in its natural shape, and yields its qualities to water and alcohol.  The active principle is Euonymin.
    Properties and Uses. -- It is tonic, laxative, alterative, diuretic, and expectorant.  It is serviceable in dyspepsia, torpid liver, constipation, dropsy, and pulmonary diseases.  In intermittents it serves a good purpose.
    Dose. -- Of the powder, twenty to thirty grains; tincture, one to four drachms; Euonymin, one-eighth to half a grain.
 
BUTTER WEED (ERIGERON CANADENSE)
    COMMON NAMES.  Colt's Tail, Pride Weed, Horse Weed, Canada Flea-Bane.
    MEDICINAL PART.  The whole plant.
    Description. -- This is an indigenous, annual herb, with a high bristly, hairy stem, from six inches to nine feet high.  The leaves are lanceolate; flowers small, white, and very numerous.
    History. -- Butterweed is common to the Northern and Middle States, grows in fields and meadows, by road-sides, and flowers from June to September.  It should be gathered when in bloom, and carefully dried.  It has a feeble odor, somewhat astringent taste, and yields its virtues to alcohol or water.
    Properties and Uses. -- It is tonic, diuretic, and astringent.  It is useful in gravel, diabetes, dropsy, and in many kidney diseases.  It can also be employed in diarrhoea, dysentery, etc.  The volatile oil may be used instead of the infusion.
    Dose. -- Of the powder, half a drachm; infusion, two to four ounces; fl.extract, teaspoonful; oil, from four to six drops on sugar.
 
CAHINCA (CHIOCOCCA RACEMOSA)
    COMMON NAME.  Snow Berry.
    MEDICINAL PART.  The bark of the root.
    Description. -- This is a climbing shrub, with a round branched root, and a stem from eight to twelve feet high.  The leaves are ovate and smooth; flowers white and odorless, and become yellow and redolent; calyx, five-cleft; corolla, funnel-shaped; stamens, five.  The fruit is a small white berry.
    History. -- This plant is a native of the West Indies, Florida, and South America.  The root has a coffee-like taste, of a reddish-brown color, and a disagreeable odor.  It affords the Cahincic Acid, its most important medicinal agent.
    Properties and Uses. -- In medium doses it aids the urinary discharge, increases the action of the heart, and promotes perspiration.  It has been found efficient in amenorrhoea, rheumatism, syphilis, etc., and is used in Brazil as an antidote to snake-bites.
    Dose. -- Of the powder, from twenty to sixty grains.
 
CALICO BUSH (KALMIA LATIFOLIA)
    COMMON NAMES.  Sheep Laurel, Spoonwood, Mountain Laurel, Lambkill.
    MEDICINAL PART.  The leaves.
    Description.--This handsome plant is a shrub from four to eight feet high, with crooked stems and a rough bark.  The leaves are evergreen, ovate, lanceolate, acute at each end, on long petioles, and from two to three inchs long.  The flowers are white and numerous.  The fruit is a dry capsule.
    History. -- Sheep Laurel inhabits the rocky hills and elevated grounds of most parts of the United States.  Its beautiful flowers appear in June and July.  The leaves are reputed to be poisonous to sheep and other animals, and it is said that birds which have eaten them will poison those who eat the birds.  The leaves are the officinal part.  Attention was called to their medicinal virtues by the use which the Indians make of them, viz., a decoction by which they commit suicide.
    Properties and Uses. -- The plant, in medicinal doses, is antisyphilitic, sedative to the heart, and somewhat astringent.  It is a most efficient agent in syphilis, fevers, jaundice, neuralgia, and inflammation.  The preparation should be used with great care and prudence.  In cases of poisoning with this plant, either man or beast, whiskey is the best antidote.  Externally, stewed with lard, it is serviceable as an ointment for varioius skin diseases.
    Dose. -- The saturated tincture of the leaves is the best form of administration.  It is given in from ten to twenty drops every two or three hours.  Powdered leaves, from ten to twenty grains.
 
CANCER ROOT (OROBANCHE VIRGINIANA)
    COMMON NAME.  Beech Drops.
    MEDICINAL PART.  The plant.
    Description. -- This is a parasitic plant, with a smooth, leafless stem from a foot to a foot and a half in height, with slender branches given off the whole length of it.  The root is scaly and tuberous.
    History. -- This plant is native to North America, and generally a parasite upon the roots of beech trees, flowering in August and September.  The whole plant is of a dull red color, without any verdure.  It has a disagreeable, astringent taste.  It yields its virtues to water and alcohol.
    Properties and Uses. -- An eminent astringent.  Used with benefit in fluxes and in diarrhoea, but possesses no property of curing cancer.  It can be used with advantage in erysipelas.  Locally applied to wounds, it prevents or arrests the process of mortification.  It is also useful as an application to obstinate ulcers, aphthous ulcerations, etc., etc.  It exerts the same influence upon the capillary system as the mineral drug tincture of iron.
 
CANNABIS INDICA
    COMMON NAME.  Indian Hemp.
    MEDICINAL PART.  The root.
    Description. -- This is an herbaceus annual, growing about three feet high, with an erect, branched, angular bright green stem.  The leaves are alternate, or opposite, on long lax foot-stalks, roughish, with sharply serrated leaflets tapering into a long, smooth entire point.  The male flowers are drooping and long, the females simple and erect.  The seeds are small, ash-colored, and inodorous.
    History. -- Cannabis Indica, or Cannabis Sativa, is a native of the Caucasus, Persia, but grows in the hilly regions of Northern India.  It is cultivated in many parts of Europe and Asia; but medicine of value can only be made from the Indian variety, the active principle of the plant being developed only by the heat of the climate of Hindostan.  The dried tops and resin are the parts used.  The preparations called Churrus, Gunjah, Bhang, Hashish, etc., sold in this country are mostly feeble imitations of the genuine articles, and are comparatively worthless.  Even the few specimens of the genuine productions which reach the shops, and are sold at high prices, are crude and inferior, and can in no wise impart the effects which attach to the pure article.  It is a matter of great difficulty to procure the genuine article even direct from dealers in India, unless you have had years of experience as a practising herbal physician, and have established business connections in various parts of the world as an importer of rare and pure medicinal herbs, barks, roots, resins, etc.
    The Cannabis Sativa, or common hemp, possesses similar properties, and can be substituted if the Asiatic hemp is not procurable.
    Properties and Uses. -- It is narcotic, anodyne, and antispasmodic.  It has been successfully employed in gout, neuralgia, rheumatism, locked jaw, convulsions, chorea, hysteria, and uterine hemorrhage; but it is chiefly valuable as an invigorator of mind and body.  Its exhilarating qualities are unequalled, and it is a certain restorative in low mental conditions, as well as in cases of extreme debility and emaciation.  In such cases it may be regarded as a real rejuvenator.  It should be taken by the advice of one experienced in its uses in order that its merits may be properly and fairly experienced.  The spurious hemp should never be taken, as it produces, what the genuine does not, unpleasant consequences.  I have used this article in many a preparation with great success.
 
CASSIA MARILANDICA
    COMMON NAMEES.  American Senna, Wild Senna.
    MEDICINAL PART.  The leaves.
    Description. -- This is a perennial herb, growing from four to six feet high, with round, smooth, and slightly hairy stems.  The leaves have long petioles, ovate at base; each petiole has eight or ten leaflets, which are oblong, smooth, mucronate, an inch or two long, and quite narrow.  The flowers are bright yellow, and the fruit is a legume from two to four inches long.
    History. -- The American Senna is to be found from New England to Carolina, growing in rich soils here and there.  It flowers from June to September, and the leaves are gathered, for their medicinal virtues, while the plant is in bloom.  They yield their virtues to alcohol or water.
    Properties and Uses. -- It is one of the most important herbal cathartics furnished by America, and is mentioned here solely on the gound that it is equally valuable as the foreign Senna, or ordinary Senna of the drug-shope, and costs much less.  The analysis of the leaves shows that they contain albumen, mucilage, starch, yellow coloring matter, volatile oil, fatty matter, resin, lignin, and salts of potassa, and lime.
    Dose. -- Of the powder, from a half-drachm to two and a half drachms; infusion, four or five ounces.
 
CATECHU (ACACIA CATECHU)
    COMMON NAMES.  Cutch, Gambir, Terra Japonica.
    MEDICINAL PART.  Extract of the wood.
    Description.--Catechu is a small-sized tree from fifteen to twenty feet high.  The bark is thick, and branches spreading.  Leaves bipinnate.  Flowers numerous, white or pale yellow, and the fruit a legume.
    History. -- This tree is common to the East Indian continent, thriving in Bengal, and on the Malabar coast.  As found in the shops it is in square, round, and irregular pieces, variable in color, friable, odorless, astringent taste.  Soluble in hot water, depositing a reddish matter on cooling.
    Properties and Uses. -- This is a strong astringent.  In chronic diarrhoea, chronic catarrh, chronic dysentery, it proves beneficial, and it is a valuable agent as a local application in throat diseases, especially such as singers are subject to.  The tincture is often useful as a local application to fissured nipples of nursing women.
    Dose. -- Of the powder, from five to twenty grains; of the tincture, from twenty minims to half an ounce.
 
CEDRON (SIMARA CEDRON)
    MEDICINAL PART.  The seed.
    Description. -- Simaba is a small tree, with an erect stem about half a foot in diameter, branching luxuriantly at the top.  Leaves obovate, large, and serrated; flowers sessile, pale brown, and the fruit a solitary drupe.
    History. -- This tree grows in New Grenada and Central America.  Its value as a medicinal agent has long been known in Costa Rica, Trinidad, etc., and from thence was communicated to scientific gentlemen in France.  The seed, which is the part used, is about an inch and a half long, nearly an inch broad, and about half an inch thick.  It is hard, but can be easily cut by a common knife.  It is inodoous, but tastes like quassia or aloes, and yields its properties to water or alcohol.  In South America the properties of these seeds were known as early as the year 1700.  At that time they were applied more especially as an antidote to the bites of poisonous serpents, and similar affections.
    Properties and Uses. -- It is an antispasmodic, and one of the most valuable articles of the kind known to educated herbalists.  It is very useful in all nervous affections, and is administered in one or two grain doses.  As it can only be obtained from those who, like myself, import it especially, it is unnecessary to say that it should not be administered without the advice of competent herbal physicians.  To give an idea of its value as an antispasmodic, I mention that it is a cure for hydrophobia, and an antidote for the majority of acro-narcotic poisons.
 
CELANDINE (CHELIDONIUM MAJUS)
    COMMON NAME.  Tetter Wort.
    MEDICINAL PARTS.  Herb and root.
    Description. -- This plant is an evergreen perennial, with a stem from one to two feet in height, branched, swelled at the joints, leafy, round, and smooth; the leaves are smooth, spreading, very deeply pinnatified; leaflets in from two to four pairs, from one and half to two and a half inches long, and about two-thirds as broad, the terminal one largest, all ovate, cuneately incised or lobed; the lateral ones sometimes dilated at the lower margin, near the base almost as if auricled; color of all, a deep shining green; the flowers are bright yellow, umbellate, on long, often hairy stocks.
    History. -- Celandine is a pale green, fleshy herb, indigenous to Europe and naturalized in the United States; it grows along fences, by roads, in waste places, etc., and flowers from May to October.  If the plant be wounded, a bright yellow, offensive juice flows out, which has a persistent, nauseous, bitter taste, with a biting sensation in the mouth and fauces.  The root is the most intensely bitter part of the plant, and is more commonly preferred.  Drying diminishes its activity.  It yields its virtues to alcohol or water.
    Properties and Uses. -- It is stimulant, acrid, alterative, diuretic, diaphoretic, purgative, and vulnerary.  It is used internally in decoction or tincture, and externally in poultice or ointment for scrofula, cutaneous diseases, and piles.  It is likewise good in hepatic affections, or liver complaints, and exerts a special influence on the spleen.  As a drastic hydragogue, or purge, it is fully equal to gamboge.  The juice, when applied to the skin, produces inflammations, and even vesications.  It has long been known as a caustic for the removal of warts; it is also applied to indolent ulcers, fungous growths, etc., and is useful in removing specks and opacities of the cornea of the eye.
    Celandine is from the Greek word Chelidon, which signifies a swallow.  The ancients assert that if you put out the eyes of young swallows when they are in the nest, the old ones will restore their eyes again with this herb.  It is said that we may mar the apple of the bird's eye with a needle, and that the old birds will restore their sight again by means of this herb. Never having made any such cruel experiments, I am not prepared to say whether any such miraculous power of healing loss of sight is a virtue of the plant, or whether it is an instinct or gift inherent of the swallow itself.
    Celandine is also used in curing salt-rheum, tetter, or ringworm. It is superior to arnica as a vulnerary; an alcoholic tincture of the root (three ounces to a pint) will be found an unrivaled application to prevent or subdue traumatic inflammations.
    Dose.--Of the powdered root, from half a drachm to one drachm; of the fresh juice, from twenty to forty drops, in some bland liquid; of the tincture, from one to two fluid drachms; of the aqueous extract, from five to ten grains.
 
CENTAURY (SABBATIA ANGULARIS)
    COMMON NAME.  Rose Pink.
    MEDICINAL PART.  The herb.
    Description. -- This plant has a yellow fibrous, biennial root, with an erect, smooth, quadrangular stem, with the angles winged, having many opposite branches, and growing from one to two feet in height.  The leaves are opposite, fine-veined, smooth, entire, from one to five inches in length, and from half an inch to one and a half inches wide, clasping the stem.  The flowers are numerous, from an inch and a quarter to an inch and a half in diameter, of a rich rose or carnation color, standing, as it were at the tops of one umbril or tuft, very like those of St. John's wort, opening themselves in the day-time and closing at night, after which come seed in little short husks, in forms like unto wheat corn.  There are three varieties of the Centaury in England, one kind bearing white flowers, another yellow, and another red.  All have medicinal properties, although the Americna variety is considered preferable to the European Centaury.
    History. -- This plant is common to most parts of the United States, growing in moist meadows, among high grass, on the prairies, and in damp, rich soils, flowering from June to September.  The whole herb is used.  It has a very bitter taste, and yields its virtues to water or alcohol.  The best time for gathering it is during the flowering season.  In England they use the red Centaury in diseases of the blood, the yellow in choleric diseases, and the white in those of phlegm and water.
    Properties and Uses. -- It is an excellent tonic.  It is used in all fall periodic febrile diseases, both as a preventive and a remedy.  It is also serviceable as a bitter tonic in dyspepsia and convalescence from fevers.  When administered in warm infusion it is a domestic remedy for worms and so restore the menstrual secretion.
    Dose. -- Of the powder, from half a drachm to a drachm; of the cold infusion, a teacupful every two or three hours; of the tincture, a wineglassful; of the extract, from two to six grains.
 
CENTURY PLANT (AGAVE AMERICANA)
    COMMON NAME.  South American Agave.
    MEDICINAL PART.  The inspissated juice.
    Description. -- This plant, which is also sometimes called the Century Plant, from an erroneous idea that it blossoms but once in a hundred years, is the largest of all herbaceous plants.  It is an evergreen, and does not blossom often.
    History. -- It flourishes in the warmer latitudes of South America, where its juice is expressed by the natives and allowed to ferment.  In this condition it is called pulque, and is used as an exhilarating beverage.  The natives can drink large quantities of this liquor without getting very much intoxicated; but it is very severe upon those who are not accustomed to it.
    Properties and Uses. -- The fresh juice is used by the South Americans to regulate the action of the bowels and kidneys, and is considered very valuable for dyspepsia and diseases of the bladder.  The South American women use the juice and the decoction to promote menstruation.  I can say of my own knowledge that, in proper combination, it is a superior anti-syphilitic, and that in scobutic affections it is without many superiors.  The dose is from half a fluid ounce to two ounces, three times a day.
    The Agave Virginica, or False Aloe, is not to be confounded with this, as that plant is a laxative and carminative.
 
CHAMOMILE (ANTHEMIS NOBILIS)
    MEDICINAL PART.  The Flowers.
    Description. -- This is a perennial herb, with a strong fibrous root.  The stems in a wild state are prostrate, but in gardens more upright, about a span long, round, hollow, furrowed, and downy; the leaves pale green, pinnate, sessile, with thread-shaped leaflets.  The flower-heads terminal, rather larger than the daisy, and of yellow color, or whitish.
    History. -- Chamomile is indigenous to Southern Europe; we have also a common or wild Chamomile (Matricaria Chamomilla) growing in the United States, but it is not considered as good as the Roman Chamomile for medicinal purposes, which is the kind I use.  The white flowers are the best; they have an aromatic, agreeably bitter taste, and peculiar odor.  They yield their properties to alcohol and water.
    Properties and Uses. -- Chamomile is a tonic; one or two teacupfuls of the warm infusion will usually vomit.  The cold infusion is highly useful in dyspepsia, and in all cases of weak or irritable stomachs, also in intermittent and typhoid fevers.  The oil is carminative and antispasmodic, and is used in flatulency, colic, cramp in the stomach, hysteria, nervous diseases, and painful menstruation.
    A poultice of Chamomile will often prevent gangrene, and remove it when present.  It is an ingredient in my "Restorative Assimilant," and is a most excellent adjutant and corrigent in that great remedy.
    Dose. -- Half a drachm to two drachms of the flowers.  Of the infusion, half a teacupful to a teacupful; of the oil, five to fifteen drops on sugar.
 
CHERRY LAUREL (PRUNUS LAUROCERASUS)
    MEDICINAL PART.  The leaves.
    Description. -- This is a small evergreen shrub or tree with smooth branches.  Leaves with short petioles, oval-oblong, serrate, acute, and smooth.  Flowers shorter than the leaves, calyx inferior, corolla has five white petals; stamens about twenty; and fruit a round, black, smooth drupe.
    History. -- Originally a native of Asia Minor, from whence it was introduced into Europe in 1576, and subsequently from Europe to the United States.  It is now common in gardens and shrubberies.  The leaves have scarcely any odor until bruised, then they have a bitter almond odor; taste very bitter, aromatic, and slightly astringent.  They impart their virtues to water and alcohol.
    Properties and Uses. -- An excellent sedative.  Useful in tic-doulureux, phthisis, spasmodic cough, palpitation of the heart, and in all spasmodic affections.
    Dose. -- Powdered leaves, four to eight grains; laurel water, ten to thirty drops.
 
CHICKWEED (STELLARIA MEDIA)
    MEDICINAL PART.  The herb.
    Description. -- This plant is an annual or biennial weed, from six to fifteen inches in length, with a prostrate, brittle, and leafy stem.  The leaves are ovate-cordate; the lower ones on hairy petioles.  The flowers are small and white, petals two-parted, stamens three, five, or ten.
    History. -- It is a common plant in Europe and America, growing in fields and around dwellings, in moist, shady places.  It flowers from the beginning of spring till the last of autumn.  The seeds are eaten by poultry and birds.  The whole herb is used when recent.
    Properties and Uses. -- It is a cooling demulcent.  The fresh leaves bruised and applied as a poultice to indolent, intractable ulcers, even when of many years' standing, will produce most immediate and decided beneficial results, to be changed two or three times a day.  The bruised leaves will likewise be found an invaluable application in acute ophthalmia.  An ointment made by bruising the recent leaves in fresh lard, may be used as a cooling application to erysipelatous and other forms of ulceration, as well as many forms of cutaneous diseases.
 
CHOCOLATE ROOT, GEUM RIVALE (Water Avens), GEUM VIRGINIANUM (White Avens)
    COMMON NAMES.  Throat Root, Purple Avens.
    MEDICINAL PART.  The root.
    Description. -- GEUM RIVALE, or Purple Avens, is a perennial, deep green herb; woody root; leaves nearly lyrate, crenate-dentate, and from four to six inches long.  The flowers are few and yellowish purple in color.
    GEUM VIRGINIANUM, or Throat Root, is also a perennial, with a small, crooked root.  The stem is two or three feet high.  The leaves are pinnate or lyrate; flowers rather small and white; and the fruit an achenium.  The former is common to the United States and Europe, flowering in June or July, and the latter only to the United States, flowering from June to August.
    History. -- These plants, with other varieties, have long been used in domestic practice.  The whole herb contains medicinal properties, but the officinal and most efficient part is the root.  Boiling water or alcohol extracts their virtues.
    Properties and Uses. -- Is tonic and astringent.  It is used in passive and chronic hemorrhages, chronic diarrhoea and dysentery, leucorrhoea, dyspepsia, pulmonary affections, congestions of the abdominal viscera, etc.
    Dose. -- Of the powder, from twenty to thirty grains; of the decoction, from two tablespoonfuls to a wineglassful, three or four times a day.
 
CINCHONA
    COMMON NAMES.  Peruvian Bark, Jesuits' Bark.
    MEDICINAL PART.  The bark.
    Description. -- The bark is obtained from the Cinchona Calisaya, Cinchona Condaminea, Cinchona Succirubra, and Cinchona Lancifolia.  These trees are all evergreen trees or shrubs.  Their generic character is to have opposite entire leaves; flowers white, or usually roseate or purplish, and very fragrant; calyx a turbinated tube; corolla salver-shaped; stamens, five; anthers, linear; style, simple; stigma, bifid.  The fruit a capsule, ovate or oblong, filled with numerous winged seeds.  About thirteen varieties of cinchona are known to commerce, but the above are the most important.  Of these species the former three yield respectively the pale, yellow, and red cinchona barks, and the fourth is one of the sources of quinine.
    History. -- Cinchona is a very old discovery, and takes its name from the wife of the Spanish viceroy, Count de Cinchon, who was cured of fever by it, at Lima, about the year 1638.  For some time after its introduction into Europe, the Jesuits, who received the bark from their brethren in Peru, alone used it, and kept to themselves the secret of its origin; and their use of it was so successful that it received the name which still clings to it of "Jesuits' Bark."  The bark richest in the antiperiodic alkaloids is the Cinchona Calisaya.  The geographical range of the cinchonas appear to be exclusively confined to the Andes, within the boundaries of Peru, Bolivia, Equador, and New Granada.  Thirteen species furnish the barks of commerce, and all of them are found growing from one to ten thousand feet above the level of the sea.  The four species we have named at the head of this article are, however, the only ones recognized by the United States Pharmacopoeia, and are the favorites everywhere.  Since the seventeenth century these barks have been the study of men versed in medical and chemical science, and they and the preparations made from them rank among the most important articles of the Materia Medica.  It contains numerous active principles, but the most important, and one chiefly used is quinine.
    Properties and Uses. -- Cinchona bark is tonic, antiperiodic, astringent to a moderate extent, and eminently febrifuge.  It is topically (or externally) antiseptic, and is of much value when applied to gangrenous ulcerations, or used for gargles and washes in erysipelas, ulcerated sore throat, mouth, etc.  I do not recommend the use of the bark in cases where the stomach is very much weakened (although it is employed in every disease in which there is deficient tone), because the woody fibre in the powder will most generally disagree.  When taken internally it imparts a sensation of warmth to the stomach, which gradually spreads over the whole body; the pulse becomes stronger and is accelerated, and the various organs are gently stimulated.  It may be used with benefit in ordinary cases of dyspepsia, general debility, and all febrile, eruptive, and inflammatory diseases, in whatever stage they may be.  In all cases of night-sweating, or great feebleness, it is valuable.  As an antiperiodic it is not surpassed by anything else used.  When it excites nausea, add an aromatic; if purging, opium; if costiveness, rhubarb.
    Quinine is a white flocculent powder, inodorous, and has a very bitter taste.  It is very sparingly soluble in warm water, still less so in cold water.  It is readily soluble in hot alcohol, and tolerably so in ether.  It is always best to administer quinine instead of the bark, unless some of the effects of the other principles are desired.
    Dose. -- Of the powder, half a drachm to a drachm; fluid extract, ten to sixty drops; of quinine, from one to fifteen grains, according to purpose.
 
CINQUE-FOIL (POTENTILLA CANADENSIS)
    COMMON NAME.  Five-Finger.
    MEDICINAL PART.  The root.
    Description.  This perennial plant has a procumbent stem from two to eighteen inches in length.  The leaves are palmate, leaflets obovate, and flowers yellow, on solitary pedicels.
    There are two varieties of this plant, the P. Pamilla, which is very small and delicate, flowering in April and May, and growing in dry, sandy soils, and the P. Simplex, a larger plant, growing in richer soils, and flowering from June to August.
    History. -- Five-finger is common to the United States, growing by road-sides, on meadow banks and waste grounds, and flowering from April to October.  The root is the part used.  It has a bitterish, styptic taste, and yields its virtues to water.
    Properties and Uses. -- It is tonic and astringent.  A decoction is useful in fevers, bowel complaints, night-sweats, menorrhagia, and other hemorrhages.  It makes an excellent gargle for spongy, bleeding gums, and ulcerated mouth and throat.
    The POTENTILLA TORMENTILLA, or Sept.-Foil of Europe, possesses similar qualities, and may be usesd by my readers in that country if the American root is not to be obtained.
 
CLEAVERS (GALIUM APARINE)
    COMMON NAMES.  Goose Grass, Catchweed, Bed-Straw.
    MEDICINAL PART.  The herb.
    Description. -- It is an annual succulent plant, with a weak, procumbent, quadrangular, retrosely-prickled stem, which grows from two to six feet high, and is hairy at the joints.  The leaves are one or two inches in length, and two or three lines in breadth; rough on the margin and tapering to the base.  The flowers are white, small, and scattered.
    History. -- This plant is common to Europe and the United States, growing in cultivated grounds, moist thickets, and along banks of rivers, and flowering from June to September.  In the green state the plant has an unpleasant odor; but it is inodorous when dried, with an acidulous, astringent, and bitter taste.  Cold or warm water extracts the virtues of the plant; boiling water destroys them.  The roots dye a permanent red.
    Properties and Uses. -- It is a most valuable refrigerant and diuretie, and will be found very beneficial in many diseases of the urinary organs, as suppression of urine, calculous affections, inflammation of the kidneys and bladder, and in the scalding of urine in gonorrhoea.  It is contra-indicated in diseases of a passive character, on account of its refrigerant and sedative effects on the system, but may be used freely in fevers and all acute diseases.  An infusion may be made by macerating an ounce and a half of the herb in a pint of warm water for two hours, of which from two to four fluid ounces may be given three or four times a day when cold.  It may be sweetened with sugar or honey.  It has also been found useful in many cutaneous diseases, as psoriasis, eczema, lichen, cancer, and scrofula, and is more particularly useful in these diseases when they are combined with strumous diathesis.  The best form for administration is that of the implanted juice, which may be in one or two drachm doses, three times a day.
    The plant called GALIUM TINCTORIUM, or Small Clevers, is nervine, anti-spasmodic, expectorant, and diaphoretic.  It is used successfully in asthma, cough, and chronic bronchitis, exerting its influence principally upon the respiratory organs.  The plant has a pungent, aromatic, pleasant, persistent taste.  A strong decoction of the herb may be given in doses of from one to four fluid ounces, and repeated two or three times a day, according to circumstances.  The root of this plant will also dye a permanent red.
 
COCA (ERITHROXYLON COCA)
    MEDICINAL PART.  The herb.
    Description. -- I first became acquainted with this most remarkable plant many years ago, while traveling in Bolivia, South America, in the beautiful valleys of the Cordilleras.  The Coca is a bush which rarely attains six feet in height, and does not often exceed three.  Its foliage is of a bright green, its flowers white, and its fruit small and red.  When the plants are just about eighteen inches high they are transplanted from the seed-beds into fields called cocales.  The ripe leaves are gathered with the fingers.  They are dried by spreading them in the sun, sometimes on woollen cloths.  The operation requires great care, for the plant must be protected from all dampness, which changes its color, and thus diminishes its value.  It is then packed in bags, weighing from fifty to one hundred and fifty pounds, which are often transported to great distances.  In the Vice-royalty of Lima, in the latter part of the last century, CASTELNAU represents the consumption of the leaf at three and a half millions of pounds, and worth one million and a quarter of Spanish dollars, while at the same time the total consumption in Peru was two and a half millions of dollars.  The importance of the Coca trade, however, is diminishing as the Red Man disappears.  The Indians mix the Coca with a small quantity of lime, and constantly carry a small bag of it on all their excursions.  They take it from three to six times a day.  Dr. GECHUDI (Travels in Peru, page 453) mentions an indian of sixty-two years of age, who was employed by him, and though at very hard work for five days, took no other nourishment, and rested but two hours of the night.  Immediately, or soon after this, he accomplished a journey of one hundred miles in two days, and said that he was ready to do the same thing again if they would give him a new supply of Coca.  CASTELNAU says he himself knew of instances as extraordinary.  In the time of the Incas the Coca was regarded as sacred.
    Properties and Uses. -- Its physiological actions are as follows:
    1.  It stimulates the stomach and promotes digestion.
    2.  In large doses it augments animal heat and accelerates the pulse and respiration.
    3.  It induces slight constipation.
    4.  In moderate doses, from one to four drachms, it stimulates the nervous system, so as to render it more tolerant of muscular fatigue.
    5.  In larger doses it gives rise to hallucinations and true delirium.
    6.  Its most precious property is that of inducing the most pleasant visions ("phantamagoria") without any subsequent depression of the nervous energies.
    7.  Probably it diminishes some of the secretions.
    The Coca has doubtless many other medical properties of a high order, and deserves further investigation.
    It stimulates powerfully the digestive functions, while at the same time it exercises a calmative influence over the mucous membranes of the stomach and bowels.  In this double action upon the stomach--stimulant and calmative--it resembles Columbo.
    It is anti-spasmodic, and is of great service in many nervous disorders, and particularly in spermatorrhoea and all debilities of the generative organs.
    I make a pill from the solid extract of Coca, combined with lime and valuable Herbal remedial agents, which I call the Napoleon Herb Pill, owing to its powerful tonic properties.  It is designed to cure all forms of debility afflicting either sex.  Its powers are promptly manifested in cases of sexual debility, whether from self-produced causes, long study, severe mental excitement, or general breaking-down of the nervous system from whatever cause.  It is equally effectual for the female weakness and debility so universal among women at the present day.  These pills are, with explicit directions, put up in sealed bottles.  Sent, prepaid by mail, to any address, on receipt of $3.00 for 100 pills.  We also use Coca in various forms in our prepared courses of medicine for special cases.
 
COLOCYNTH (CUCUMIS COLOCYNTHIS)
    COMMON NAME.  Bitter Cucumber.
    MEDICINAL PART.  The fruit divested of its rind.
    Description. -- Colocynth is an annual plant, with a whitish root, and prostrate, angular, and hispid stems.  The leaves are alternate, cordate, ovate, many-lobed, white with hairs beneath.  Flowers yellow and solitary; petals small; and fruit globose, smooth, size of an orange, yellow when ripe, with a thin solid rind, and a very bitterish flesh.
    History. -- This plant is a native of the south of Europe, Asia, and Africa.  The fruit assumes a yellow or orange color externally during the autumn, at which time it is pulled and dried quickly, either in the stove or sun.  That which is deprived of its rind, very white, light spongy, and without seeds, is the best article; all others are more or less inferior in quality.  It contains, besides oils, resins, and gums, bassorin and the sulphates of lime and magnesia.  Colocynthin is its active principle.
    Properties and Uses. -- It is a powerful hydragogue cathartic, producing copious watery evacuations.  It should never be used alone, but be combined with other cathartics. It may be used advantageously in passive dropsy and cerebral derangements.  In combination with hyoscyamus it loses its irritant properties, and may be so employed whenever its peculiar cathartic effects are desired.  Hippocrates used colocynth as a pessary to promote menstruation.
    Dose. -- Five to ten grains.
 
COLT'S FOOT (TUSSILAGO FARFARA)
    COMMON NAMES.  Cough Wort, Foal's Foot, Horse Hoof, and Bull's Foot.
    MEDICINAL PART.  The leaves.
    Description. -- Colt's foot has a long, perennial, creeping, fibrous rhizome.  The leaves are erect, cordate, sharply dentate, smooth green above, and pure white and cottony beneath.  They do not appear until the flowers are withered, and are from five to eight inches long, and about an inch broad.  The flowers are large and bright yellow.
    History. -- This plant grows in Europe, the Crimea, Persia, Siberia, and the East Indies, from the seashore to elevations of nearly eight thousand feet.  It also grows in the United States, in wet places, on the sides of brooks, flowering in March and April.  Its presence is a certain indication of a clayey soil.  The leaves are rather fragrant, and continue so after having been carefully dried.  The leaves are the parts used, though all parts of the plant are active, and should always be employed, especially the leaves, flowers, and root.  The leaves should be collected at about the period they have nearly reached their full size, the flowers as soon as they commence opening, and the root immediately after the maturity of the leaves.  When dried, all parts have a bitter mucilaginous taste, and yield their properties to water or diluted alcohol.
    Properties and Uses. -- It is emollient, demulcent, and slightly tonic.  The decoction is usually administered in doses of from one to three or four fluid ounces, and is highly serviceable in coughs, asthma, whooping-cough, and other pulmonary complaints; also useful in scrofula.  The powdered leaves form a good errhine for giddiness, headache, nasal obstructions, etc.  It is also used externally in form of poultice in scrofulous tumors.
 
COLUMBO (COCCULUS PALMATUS)
    MEDICINAL PART.  The root.
    Description. -- Columbo, so important in the present practice of medicine, is a climbing plant, with a perennial sort which is quite thick and branching.  The root is covered with a thin brown skin, marked with transverse warts.  The stems, of which one or two proceed from the same root, are twining, simple in the male plant, branched in the female, round, hairy, and about an inch or an inch and a half in circumference.  The leaves stand on rounded glandular hairy footstalks, and are alternate, distant, cordate, and have three, seven, or nine lobes and nerves.  The flowers are small and inconspicuous.
    History. -- This plant inhabits the forests near the southeastern coast of Africa, in the neighborhood of Mozambique, where the natives call it Kalumb.  The root is dug up in the dry season in the month of March, and is cut in slices, strung on cords, and hung up to dry.  The odor of Columbo is slightly aromatic; the taste bitter, and also mucilaginous.  The root is easily pulverized, but spoils by keeping after having been reduced to a powder.  It is best to powder it only as it is required for use.  The active principle of Columbo is called Columbin.  The root also yields Berberin, an excellent stomachic, which is produced from the Barberry.
    Properties and Uses. -- It