The book of herbs : giving descriptions of medical plants, and directions for gathering and preserving them, with a full account of their properties and doses : the whole written for family use / by John B. Newman.

  • Newman, John B.
Date:
1847
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The book of herbs : giving descriptions of medical plants, and directions for gathering and preserving them, with a full account of their properties and doses : the whole written for family use / by John B. Newman. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    cured, administered in this form in doses of two tea- spoonfuls every hour or half hour, many cases of windy colic. A teaspoonful given to a child every morning will cure worms, by strengthening the system, and thus not only allowing the bowels to cast them off, but, by improving their tone, not again giving the worms an opportunity to regain the ascendancy. The leaves are sometimes pressed, and in that state applied to the skin for purposes of irritation ; some- times only carried sufficiently far to redden, and at others to blister. In rheumatism of the joints, feet and loins, the pounded leaves or oil rubbed over the parts, has given effectual and permanent relief. ACORU3 CALAMUS-SWEET FLAG. Fltg-root, Sweet-cane, Myrtle flag, Sweet-grass, Swcct-root, and Sweet-rush. This plant has a perennial, jointed and flattened root, which runs parellel with the ground, sometimes nearly an inch in thickness and several feet in length. The leaves spring from the root; they are long, smooth and sword-shaped, green above, but reddish near the root. The flower-stalks differ from the leaves mostly in being much longer than them, and from sending out about the middle of three lengths a short stalk of some two inches in length, crowned in May and June with greenish yellow flowers. The fruit is a box divided into three cells, and containing many oval seeds. The roots are warm, aromatic and bitter. The in- fusion is made by pouring a pint of boiling water on an ounce of the roots, straining when cold : dose, a wincglassful three times^a day. An extract is made from it, and given in doses of twenty to twenty-five grains. In dyspepsia, where there is wind on the stomach, it is extremely useful, and will also prevent colics, if taken in time. The wind colic of infants is easily cured by giving them a teaspoonful of the warm infusion. In fever and ague, where many other remedies have