Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure, William Thomas Fernie [latest books to read .TXT] 📗

but a small place the size of half a dollar, which will in every probability become absorbed like [111] the rest, so that the patient is considered by her physicians to be absolutely cured."

The likelihood is that whatever virtue the red clover can boast for counteracting a scrofulous disposition, and as antidotal to cancer, resides in its highly-elaborated lime, silica, and other earthy salts. Moreover, this experience is not new. Sir Spencer Wells, twenty years ago, recorded some cases of confirmed cancer cured by taking powdered and triturated oyster shells; whilst egg shells similarly reduced to a fine dust have proved equally efficacious. It is remarkable that if the moorlands in the North of England, and in some parts of Ireland, are turned up for the first time, and strewed with lime, white clover springs up there in abundance.

Again, a syrup is made from the flowers of the red clover, which has a trustworthy reputation for curing whooping-cough, and of which a teaspoonful may be taken three or four times in the day. Also stress is laid on the healing of skin eruptions in children, by a decoction of the purple and white meadow trefoils.

The word clover is a corruption of the Latin clava a club; and the "clubs" on our playing cards are representations of clover leaves; whilst in France the same black suit is called trefle.

A conventional trefoil is figured on our coins, both Irish and English, this plant being the National Badge of Ireland. Its charm has been ever supposed there as an unfailing protection against evil influences, as is attested by the spray in the workman's cap, and in the bosom of the cotter's wife.

The clover trefoil is in some measure a sensitive plant; "its leaves," said Pliny, "do start up as if afraid of an assault when tempestuous weather is at hand."

[112] The phrase, "living in clover," alludes to cattle being put to feed in rich pasturage.

A sworn foe to the purple clover cultivated by farmers, is the Dodder (Cuscuta trifolii), a destructive vegetable parasite which strangles the plants in a crafty fashion, and which goes by the name of "hellweed," or "devil's guts." It lies in ambush like a pigmy field octopus, with deadly suckers for draining the sap of its victims. These it mats together in its wiry, sinuous coils, and chokes relentlessly by the acre. Nevertheless, the petty garotter— like a toad, "ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in its head." "If boiled," says Hill, "with a little ginger, the dodder in decoction works briskly as a purge. Also, the thievish herb, when bruised and applied externally to scrofulous tumours, is an excellent remedy."

The word "dodder" signifies the plural of "dodd," a bunch of threads. The parasite is sometimes called "Red tangle" and "Lady's laces."

Its botanical name Cuscuta comes from the Greek Kassuo—to sew together. If the piece of land infested with it is closely mown (and the cut material carried away unshaken), being next covered with deal saw-dust, on which a ten per cent. solution of sulphate of iron is freely poured, then by combining with the tannin contained in the stems of the Dodder, this will serve to kill the parasite without doing any injury to the clover or lucerne. Although a parasite the plant springs every year from seed. It is a remedy for swooning or fainting fits.

The Sweet Clover (or yellow Melilot), when prepared as a tincture (H.), with spirit of wine, and given as a medicine in material doses, causes, in sensitive persons, a severe headache, sometimes with a determination of [113] blood to the head, and bleeding from the nose. When administered, on the principle of curative affinity, in much smaller doses, it is singularly beneficial against nervous headaches, with oppression of the brain, acting helpfully within five minutes. Dr. Hughes (Brighton) writes: "I value this medicine much in nervous headaches, and I always carry it in my pocket-case— as the mother tincture—which I generally administer by olfaction." For epilepsy, it is said in the United States of America to be "the one grand master-remedy," by giving a drop of the tincture every five minutes during the attack, and five drops five times a day in water, for some weeks afterwards.

The Melilot (from mel, honey, and lotus, because much liked by bees) is known as Plaster Clover from its use since Galen's time in plasters for dispersing tumours. Continental physicians still employ the same made of melilot, wax, resin, and olive oil. The plant contains, "Coumarin" in common with the Sweet Woodruff, and the Tonquin Bean. Other names for it are "Harts' Clover," because deer delight to feed on it and "King's Clover" or "Corona Regis," because "the yellow flouers doe crown the top of the stalkes as with a chaplet of gold." It is an herbaceous plant common in waste places, and having light green leaves; when dried it smells like Woodruff, or new hay.

CLUB MOSS.

Though not generally thought worth more than a passing notice, or to possess any claims of a medicinal sort, yet the Club Moss, which is of common growth in Great Britain on heaths and hilly pastures, exerts by its spores very remarkable curative effects, and [114] therefore it should be favourably regarded as a Herbal Simple. It is exclusively due to homoeopathic provings and practice, that the Lycopodium clavatum (Club Moss) takes an important position amongst the most curative vegetable remedies of the present day.

The word lycopodium means "wolf's claw," because of the claw-like ends to the trailing stems of this moss; and the word clavatum signifies that its inflorescence resembles a club. The spores of Club Moss constitute a fine pale-yellow, dusty powder which is unctuous, tasteless, inodorous, and only medicinal when pounded in all agate mortar until the individual spores, or nuts, are fractured.

By being thus triturated, the nuts give out their contents, which are shown to be oil globules, wherein the curative virtues of the moss reside. Sugar of milk is then rubbed up for two hours or more with the broken spores, so as to compose a medicinal powder, which is afterwards to be further diluted; or a tincture is made from the fractured spores, with spirit of ether, which will develop their specific medicinal properties. The Club Moss, thus prepared, has been experimentally taken by provers in varying material doses; and is found through its toxical affinities in this way to be remarkably useful for chronic mucous indigestion and mal-nutrition, attended with sallow complexion, slow, difficult digestion, flatulence, waterbrash, heartburn, decay of bodily strength, and mental depression. It is said that whenever a fan-like movement of the wings of the nostrils can be observed during the breathing, the whole group of symptoms thus detailed is specially curable by Club Moss.

As a dose of the triturated powder, reduced to a weaker dilution, ten grains may be taken twice a day [115] mixed with a dessertspoonful of water; or of the tincture largely reduced in strength, ten drops twice a day in like manner. Chemically, the oil globules extracted from the spores contain "alumina" and "phosphoric acid." The diluted powder has proved practically beneficial for reducing the swelling and for diminishing the pulsation of aneurism when affecting a main blood-vessel of the heart.

In Cornwall the Club Moss is considered good against most diseases of the eyes, provided it be gathered on the third day of the moon when first seen; being shown the knife whilst the gatherer repeats these words:—

    "As Christ healed the issue of blood,
    Do thou cut what thou cut test for good."

"Then at sundown the Club Moss should be cut by the operator whilst kneeling, and with carefully washed hands. It is to be tenderly wrapped in a fair white cloth, and afterwards boiled in water procured from the spring nearest the spot where it grew," and the liquor is to be applied as a fomentation; or the Club Moss may be "made into an ointment with butter from the milk of a new cow." Such superstitious customs had without doubt a Druidic origin, and they identify the Club Moss with the Selago, or golden herb, "Cloth of Gold" of the Druids. This was reputed to confer the power of understanding the language of birds and beasts, and was intimately connected with some of their mysterious rites; though by others it is thought to have been a sort of Hedge Hyssop (Gratiola).

The Common Lycopodium bears in some, districts the name of "Robin Hood's hatband." Its unmoistenable powder from the spores is a capital absorbing application to weeping, raw surfaces. At the shops, this [116] powder of the Club Moss spores is sold as "witch meal," or "vegetable sulphur." For trade purposes it is obtained from the ears of a Wolfsfoot Moss, the Lycopodium clavatum, which grows in the forests of Russia and Finland. The powder is yellow of colour, dust-like and smooth to the touch. Half a drachm of it given during July in any proper vehicle has been esteemed "a noble remedy to cure stone in the bladder." Being mixed with black pepper, it was recognized by the College of Physicians in 1721 as a medicine of singular value for preventing and curing hydrophobia. Dr. Mead, who had repeated experience of its worth, declared that he never knew it to fail when combined with cold bathing.

Club Moss powder ignites with a flicker, and is used for stage lightning. It is the Blitzmehl, or lightning-meal of the Germans, who give it in doses of from fifteen to twenty grains for the cure of epilepsy in children.

When the "Mortal Struggle" was produced (see Nicholas Nickleby) by Mr. Vincent Crummles at Portsmouth, with the aid of Miss Snevelicci, and the Infant Phenomenon, lurid lightning was much in request to astonish the natives; and this was sufficiently well simulated by igniting, with a sudden flash and a hiss, highly inflammable spores of the Club Moss projected against burning tow within a hollow cone, producing weird scenic effects.

COLTSFOOT.

The Coltsfoot, which grows abundantly throughout England in places of moist, heavy soil, especially along the sides of our raised railway banks, has been justly termed "nature's best herb for the lungs, and her most eminent thoracic." Its seeds are supposed to have lain [117] dormant from primitive times, where our railway cuttings now upturn them and set them growing anew; and the rotting foliage of the primeval herb by retaining its juices, is thought to have promoted the development and growth of our common earthworm.

The botanical name of Coltsfoot is Tussilago farfara, signifying tussis ago, "I drive away a cold"; and farfar, the white poplar tree, which has a similar leaf. It is one of the Composite order, and the older authors named this plant, Filius ante patrem—"the son before the father," because the flowers appear and wither before the leaves are produced. These flowers, at the very beginning of Spring, stud the banks with gay, golden, leafless blossoms, each growing on a stiff scaly stalk, and resembling a dandelion in miniature. The leaves, which follow later on, are made often into cigars, or are smoked as British herbal tobacco, being mixed for this purpose with the dried leaves and flowers of the eye-bright, buckbean, betony, thyme, and lavender, to which some persons add rose leaves, and chamomile flowers. All these are rubbed together by the hands into a coarse powder, Coltsfoot forming quite one-half of the same; and this powder may be very beneficially smoked for asthma, or for spasmodic bronchial cough. Linnoeus said, "Et adhuc hodie plebs in Sueciâ, instar tabaci contra tussim fugit"—"Even to-day the Swiss people cure their coughs with Coltsfoot employed like tobacco." When the flowers are fully blown and fall off, the seeds with their "clock" form a beautiful head of white flossy silk, and if this flies away when there is no wind it is said to be a sure sign of coming rain. The Goldfinch often lines her nest with the soft pappus of the Coltsfoot. In Paris the Coltsfoot flower is painted on the doorposts of an apothecary's house.

[118] From earliest times, the plant has been found helpful in maladies of the chest. Hippocrates advised it with honey for "ulcerations of the lungs." Dioscorides, Pliny, and Galen, severally commended the use of its smoke, conducted into the mouth through a funnel or reed, for giving ease to cough and difficult breathing; they named it breechion, from breex, a cough.

In taste, the leaves are harsh, bitter, and mucilaginous. They appear late in March, being green above, with an undersurface which is white, and cottony. Sussex peasants esteem the white down of the leaves as a most valuable medicine.

All parts of the plant contain chemically tannin, with a special bitter principle, and free mucilage; so that the herb is to be considered emollient, demulcent, and tonic. Dr. Cullen employed a decoction of the leaves with much benefit in scrofula, where the use of sea water had failed. And