rsh Crowfoot, or Celery-leaved
Buttercup, called in France "_herbe sardonique_," and "_grenouillette
d'eau_," when made into a tincture (H.) with spirit of wine,
and given in small diluted doses, proves curative of stitch
in the side, and of neuralgic pains between the ribs, likewise of
pleurisy without [74] feverishness. The dose should be five drops
of the third decimal tincture with a spoonful of water every three
or four hours. This plant grows commonly at the sides of our
pools, and in wet ditches, bearing numerous small yellow flowers,
with petals scarcely longer than the calyx.

CABBAGE.

"The time has come," as the walrus said in _Alice and the Looking
Glass_, "to talk of many things"--

"Of shoes, and ships, and sealing-wax; of _Cabbages_, and
kings."

The Cabbage, which is fabled to have sprung from the tears of the
Spartan lawgiver, Lycurgus, began as the Colewort, and was for
six hundred years, according to Pliny and Cato, the only internal
remedy used by the Romans. The Ionians had such a veneration
for Cabbages that they swore by them, just as the Egyptians did by
the onion. With ourselves, the wild Cabbage, growing on our
English sea cliffs, is the true Collet, or Colewort, from which have
sprung all our varieties of Cabbage--cauliflower, greens, broccoli,
etc. No vegetables were grown for the table in England before the
time of Henry the Eighth. In the thirteenth century it was the
custom to salt vegetables because they were so scarce; and in the
sixteenth century a Cabbage from Holland was deemed a choice
present.

The whole tribe of Cabbages is named botanically _Brassicaceoe--
apo tou brassein_--because they heat, or ferment.

By natural order they are cruciferous plants; and all contain much
nitrogen, or vegetable albumen, with a considerable quantity of
sulphur; hence they tend strongly to putrefaction, and when
decomposed their odour is very offensive. Being cut into pieces,
and pressed close in a tub with aromatic herbs and salt, so as to
undergo an acescent fermentation (which is [75] arrested at that
stage), Cabbages form the German _Saurkraut_, which is strongly
recommended against scurvy. The white Cabbage is most putrescible;
the red most emollient and pectoral. The juice of the red
cabbage made into syrup, without any condiments, is useful in
chronic coughs, and in bronchial asthma. The leaves of the
common white Cabbage, when gently bruised and applied to a
blistered