f
quickly advancing their cure. Each principle exercises a narcotic
influence on the nervous system, and will, thereby, relieve
spasmodic coughs. Healthy provers have taken the fresh juice of the
Greater Celandine in doses of from twenty to two hundred drops, at
repeated intervals; the results of the larger portions being drastic
purgation, with persistent nervous torpor, and with an outbreak on
the skin of irritating, sore, itching eruptions. In some of the provers
active inflammatory congestion of the right lung ensued, with
turgidity of the liver. The root beaten into a conserve with sugar will
operate by stool, and by urine. For cancerous excrescences from five
to ten drops of the fresh juice, or of the mother tincture (H.) should
be given steadily three times a day, this quantity being reduced if it
should move the bowels too freely. Some of the sap, or tincture,
should be also used outwardly as a lotion, either by itself, or diluted
with an equal quantity of cold water.

WATER PLANTS (Other).

(Water Dropwort, Water Lily, Water Pepper.)

The Water Dropwort--Hemlock (_oenanthe crocata_) is an umbelliferous
plant, frequent in our marshes and ditches. [604] It is named
from _oinos_, wine, and _anthos_, a flower, because its blossoms
have a vinous smell. A medicinal tincture is made (H.) from the
ripe fruit.

The leaves look like Celery, and the roots like parsnips. A country
name of this plant is Dead-tongue, from its paralyzing effects on the
organs of the voice. Of eight lads who were poisoned by eating the
root, says Mr. Vaughan, five died before morning, not one of them
having spoken a word. Other names are Horsebane, from its being
thought in Sweden to cause in horses a kind of palsy; (due, as
Linnaeus thought, to an insect, _curculio paraplecticus_, which
breeds in the stem); and Five-fingered-root, from its five leaflets.
The roots contain a poisonous, milky juice, which becomes yellow
on exposure to the air, and which exudes from all parts of the plant
when wounded. It will be readily seen that because of so virulent a
nature the plant is too dangerous for use as a Herbal Simple, though
the juice has been known to cure obstinate and severe skin disease.
It yields an acrid emetic principle. The root is sometimes applied by
country folk to whitlows, but this has proved an unsafe proceeding.
The plant has a pleasant odour. Its leaves have been mistaken for
Parsley, and its root for the Skirret.

The