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

During the winter the sap is thick, sweet, and albuminous; but in summer time it is bitter and acrid. Frost causes the bitterness to diminish, and sweetness to take its place; but after the frost this bitterness returns, and is intensified. The root is at its best for yielding juice about November. Chemically the active ingredients of the herb are taraxacin, and taraxacerine, with inulin (a sort of sugar), gluten, gum, albumen, potash, and an odorous resin, which is commonly supposed to stimulate the liver, and the biliary organs. Probably this reputed virtue was assigned at first to the plant largely on the doctrine of signatures, because of its bright yellow flowers of a bilious hue. But skilled medical provers who have experimentally tested the toxical effects of the Dandelion plant have found it to produce, when taken in excess, troublesome indigestion, characterized by a tongue coated with a white skin which peels off in patches, leaving a raw surface, whilst the kidneys become unusually active, with profuse night sweats and an itching nettle rash. For these several symptoms when occurring of themselves, a combination of the decoction, and the medicinal tincture will be invariably curative.

To make a decoction of the root, one part of this dried, and sliced, should be gently boiled for fifteen minutes in twenty parts of water, and strained off when cool. It may be sweetened with brown sugar, or honey, if unpalatable when taken alone, several teacupfuls being given during the day. Dandelion roots as collected for the market are often adulterated with those of the common Hawkbit (Leontodon hispidus); but these are more tough and do not give out any milky juice.

[150] The tops of the roots dug out of the ground, with the tufts of the leaves remaining thereon, and blanched by being covered in the earth as they grow, if gathered in the spring, are justly esteemed as an excellent vernal salad. It was with this homely fare the good wise Hecate entertained Theseus, as we read in Evelyn's Acetaria. Bergius says he has seen intractable cases of liver congestion cured, after many other remedies had failed, by the patients taking daily for some months, a broth made from Dandelion roots stewed in boiling water, with leaves of Sorrel, and the yelk of an egg; though (he adds) they swallowed at the same time cream of tartar to keep their bodies open.

Incidentally with respect to the yelk of an egg, as prescribed here, it is an established fact that patients have been cured of obstinate jaundice by taking a raw egg on one or more mornings while fasting. Dr. Paris tells us a special oil is to be extracted from the yelks (only) of hard boiled eggs, roasted in pieces in a frying pan until the oil begins to exude, and then pressed hard. Fifty eggs well fried will yield about five ounces of this oil, which is acrid, and so enduringly liquid that watch-makers use it for lubricating the axles and pivots of their most delicate wheels. Old eggs furnish the oil most abundantly, and it certainly acts as a very useful medicine for an obstructed liver. Furthermore the shell, when finely triturated, has served by its potentialised lime to cure some forms of cancer. Sweet are the uses of adversity! even such as befell the egg symbolised by Humpty-Dumpty:—

    "Humptius in muro requievit Dumptius alto,
    Humptius e muro Dumptius—heu! cecidit!
    Sed non Regis equi, Reginae exercitus omnis
    Humpti, te, Dumpti, restituere loco."

[151] The medicinal tincture of Dandelion is made from the entire plant, gathered in summer, employing proof spirit which dissolves also the resinous parts not soluble in water. From ten to fifteen drops of this tincture may be taken with a spoonful of water three times in the day.

Of the freshly prepared juice, which should not be kept long as it quickly ferments, from two to three teaspoonfuls are a proper dose. The leaves when tender and white in the spring are taken on the Continent in salads or they are blanched, and eaten with bread and butter. Parkinson says: "Whoso is drawing towards a consumption, or ready to fall into a cachexy, shall find a wonderful help from the use thereof, for some time together." Officially, according to the London College, are prepared from the fresh dried roots collected in the autumn, a decoction (one ounce to a pint of boiling water), a juice, a fresh extract, and an inspissated liquid extract.

Because of its tendency to provoke involuntary urination at night, the Dandelion has acquired a vulgar suggestive appellation which expresses this fact in most homey terms: quasi herba lectiminga, et urinaria dicitur: and this not only in our vernacular, but in most of the European tongues: quia plus lotii in vesicam derivat quam puerulis retineatur proesertim inter dormiendum, eoque tunc imprudentes et inviti stragula permingunt.

At Gottingen, the roots are roasted and used instead of coffee by the poorer folk; and in Derbyshire the juice of the stalk is applied to remove warts. The flower of the Dandelion when fully blown is named Priest's Crown (Caput monachi), from the resemblance of its naked receptacle after the winged seeds have been all blown away, to the smooth shorn head of a Roman [152] cleric. So Hurdis sings in his poem The Village Curate:—

    "The Dandelion this:
    A college youth that flashes for a day
    All gold: anon he doffs his gaudy suit,
    Touched by the magic hand of Bishop grave,
    And all at once by commutation strange
    Becomes a reverend priest: and then how sleek!
    How full of grace! with silvery wig at first
    So nicely trimmed, which presently grows bald.
    But let me tell you, in the pompous globe
    Which rounds the Dandelion's head is fitly couched
    Divinity most rare."

Boys gather the flower when ripe, and blow away the hall of its silky seed vessels at the crown, to learn the time of day, thus sportively making:—

    "Dandelion with globe of down
    The school-boy's clock in every town."

Dates are the most wholesome and nourishing of all our imported fruits. Children especially appreciate their luscious sweetness, as afforded by an abundant sugar which is easily digested, and which quickly repairs waste of heat and fat. With such a view, likewise, doctors now advise dates for consumptive patients; also because they soothe an irritable chest, and promote expectoration; whilst, furthermore, they prevent costiveness. Dates are the fruit of the Date palm (Phoenix dactylifera), or, Tree of Life.

In old English Bibles of the sixteenth century, the name Date-tree is constantly given to the Palm, and the fruit thereof was the first found by the Israelites when wandering in the Wilderness.

Oriental writers have attributed to this tree a certain semi-human consciousness. The name Phoenix was [153] bestowed on the Date palm because a young shoot springs always from the withered stump of an old decayed Date tree, taking the place of the dead parent; and the specific term Dactylifera refers to a fancied resemblance between clusters of the fruit and the human fingers.

The Date palm is remarkably fond of water, and will not thrive unless growing near it, so that the Arabs say: "In order to flourish, its feet must be in the water, and its head in the fire (of a hot sun)." Travellers across the desert, when seeing palm Dates in the horizon, know that wells of water will be found near at hand: at the same time they sustain themselves with Date jam.

In some parts of the East this Date palm is thought been the tree of the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. It is mystically represented as the tree of life in the sculptured foliage of early French churches, and on the primitive mosaics found in the apses of Roman Basilicas. Branches of this tree are carried about in Catholic countries on Palm Sunday. Formerly Dates were sent to England and elsewhere packed in mats from the Persian gulf; but now they arrive in clean boxes, neatly laid, and free from duty; so that a wholesome, sustaining, and palatable meal may be had for one penny, if they are eaten with bread.

The Egyptian Dates are superior, being succulent and luscious when new, but apt to become somewhat hard after Christmas.

The Dates, however, which surpass all others in their general excellence, are grown with great care at Tafilat, two or three hundred miles inland from Morocco, a region to which Europeans seldom penetrate.

These Dates travel in small packages by camel, rail, and steamer, being of the best quality, and highly valued. Their exportation is prohibited by the African [154] authorities at Tafilat, unless the fruit crop has been large enough to allow thereof after gathering the harvest with much religious ceremony.

Dates of a second quality are brought from Tunis, being intermixed with fragments of stalk and branch; whilst the inferior sorts come in the form of a cake, or paste (adjoue!), being pressed into baskets. In this shape they were tolerably common with us in Tudor times, and were then used for medicinal purposes. Strutt mentions a grocer's bill delivered in 1581, in which occurs the item of six pounds of dates supplied at a funeral for two shillings; and we read that in 1821 the best kind of dates cost five shillings a pound.

If taken as a portable refection by jurymen and others who may be kept from their customary food Dates will prevent exhaustion, and will serve to keep active the energies of mind and body. The fruit should be selected when large and soft, being moist, and of a reddish yellow colour outside, and not much wrinkled, whilst having within a white membrane between the flesh and the stone.

Beads for rosaries are made in Barbary from Date stones turned in a lathe; or when soaked in water for a couple of days the stones may be given to cattle as a nutritious food, being first ground in a mill. The fodder being astringent will serve by its tannin, which is abundant, to cure or prevent looseness.

In a clever parody on Bret Harte's "Heathen Chinee," an undergraduate is detected in having primed himself before examination thus:—

    "Inscribed on his cuffs were the Furies, and Fates,
    With a delicate map of the Dorian States:
    Whilst they found in his palms, which were hollow,
    What are common in Palms—namely, Dates."

[155] Again, a conserve is prepared by the Egyptians from unripe Dates whole with sugar. The soft stones are edible: and this jam, though tasteless, is very nourishing. The Arabs say that Adam when driven out of Paradise took with him three things—the Date, chief of all fruits, Myrtle, and an ear of Wheat.

Another Palm—the Sagus, or, Cycus revolute,—which grows naturally in Japan and the East Indian Islands, being also cultivated in English hot-houses, yields by its gummy pith our highly nutritious sago. This when cooked is one of the best and most sustaining foods for children and infirm old persons. The Indians reserve their finest sago for the aged and afflicted. A fecula is washed from the abundant pith, which is chemically a starch, very demulcent, and more digestible than that of rice. It never ferments in the stomach, and is very suitable for hectic persons. By the Arabs the pith of the Date-bearing Palm is eaten in like manner. The simple wholesome virtues of this domestic substance have been told of from childhood in the well-known nursery rhyme, which has been playfully rendered into Latin and French:—

    "There was an old man of Iago
    Whom they kept upon nothing but sago;
    Oh! how he did jump when the doctor said plump:
    'To a roast leg of mutton you may go.'"

    "Jamdudum senior quidam de rure Tobagus
    Invito mad das carpserat ore dapes;
    Sed medicus tandem non injucunda locutus:
    'Assoe' dixit 'oves sunt tibi coena, senex.'"

    "J'ai entendu parler d'un veillard de Tobag
    Qui ne mangea longtemps que du ris et du sague;
    Mais enfin le medecin lui dit ces mots:
    'Allez vous en, mon ami, au gigot.'"

Cordial waters distilled from the fragrant herb called Dill are, as every mother and monthly nurse well know, a sovereign remedy for wind in the infant; whilst they serve equally well to correct flatulence in the grown up "gourmet." This highly scented plant (Anethum graveolens) is of Asiatic origin, growing wild also in some parts of England, and commonly cultivated in our gardens for kitchen or medicinal uses.

It "hath a little stalk of a cubit high, round, and joyned, whereupon do grow leaves very finely cut, like to those of Fennel, but much smaller." The herb is of the umbelliferous order, and its fruit chemically furnishes "anethol," a volatile empyreumatic oil similar to that contained in the Anise, and Caraway. Virgil speaks of the Dill in his _Second Eclogue _as the bene olens anethum, "a pleasant and fragrant plant." Its seeds were formerly directed to be used by the Pharmacopoeias of London