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.

    40/954 (page 8)
    624 TAMARIND TREE. rinds are prepared for exportation at Jamaica in the following manner: c< The fruit or pods are gathered (in June, July, and August) when full ripe, which is known by their fragility or easy breaking on small pressure between the finger and thumb. The fruit, taken out of the pod, and cleared from the shelly fragments, is placed in layers in a cask, and boiling syrup, just before it begins to granulate, is poured in, till the cask is filled: the syrup pervades every part quite down to the bottom, and when cool the cask is headed for sale.” He observes, that the better mode of preserving this fruit is with sugar, well clarified with eggs, till a transparent syrup is formed, which gives the fruit a much pleasanter flavour: but as a principal medicinal purpose of the pulp depends upon its acidity, which is thus counteracted by the admixture of sugar, it would therefore be of more utility if always imported here in the pods. The fruit produced in the East Indies is more esteemed than that of the West, and easily^ to be distinguished by the greater length of the pods, and the pulp being dryer and of a darker colour. MEDICAL VIRTUES. This fruit very much resembles the nature of prunes, but is more acid, and enters as an useful ingredient into the lenitive electuary. It is found of the highest use in the sore throat, as a powerful cleanser, and put into boiling water, until mo¬ derately cold, is a delightful drink to persons parched under the heat of fever, and in the lowest stage of putrid fever.