A family herbal: or, Familiar account of the medical properties of British and foreign plants, also their uses in dying, and the various arts, arranged according to the Linnaean system / [Robert John Thornton].

  • Thornton, Robert John, 1768?-1837.
Date:
1814
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A family herbal: or, Familiar account of the medical properties of British and foreign plants, also their uses in dying, and the various arts, arranged according to the Linnaean system / [Robert John Thornton]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    17/954
    652 COMMON BROOM. been recommended as powerful diuretics in dropsies, when joined with nitre, sal-diureticus, or other neutral salts; and if taken in sufficient quantity they prove likewise purgative. The infusions have been given in doses of one, two, or more ounces, frequently repeated,—the extract from half a drachm to a drachm and a half. Dr. Cullen says, (C The broom, though very little in use, I have inserted in my catalogue (of cathartics) from my own experience of it. I found it first in use among our common people : but I have since prescribed it to some of my patients in the manner following:—I order half an ounce of fresh broom tops to be boiled in a pound of water till one half of this is consumed, and of this decoction I give two table-spoonfuls every hour till it operates by stool, or till the whole is taken. It seldom fails to operate both by stool and urine, and by repeating this exhibi¬ tion every day, or every second day, some dropsies have been cured.” The seeds have been used for the same purposes as the tops. The ashes of the broom have long had the reputation of being very powerful diuretics, and they are an ingredient in most of the diuretic wines and infusions prepared fifty or sixty years ago; but whether the alkaline salts of these ashes are rendered more powerfully diuretic by the mixture of an oil, or any other foreign substance got from the broom in burning, than the alka¬ line salts got from other vegetables, I think is much to be doubted. The seeds when roasted have been used as coffee. The bark, for tanning.