g Chambers
writes (_Diet in Health and Disease_), "I feel sure that the
infertility, pallor, fetid breath, and bad teeth which characterise
some of our town populations are to a great extent due to their
inability to get fresh anti-scorbutic vegetables as articles of diet:
therefore I regard the Water-cress seller as one of the saviours of
her country." Culpeper said pithily long ago: "They that will live
in health may eat Water-cress if they please; and if they won't, I
cannot help it."

The scrofula to which the Water-cress and its allied plants are
antidotal, got its name from _scrofa_, "a burrowing pig,"
signifying the radical destruction of important glands in the body
by this undermining constitutional disease. Possibly the quaint
lines which nurses have long been given to repeat for the
amusement of babies while fondling their infantine fingers bear a
hidden meaning which pointedly imports the scrofulous taint. This
nursery distich, as we remember, personates the fingers one by one
as five little fabulous pigs:--the first small piggy doesn't feel well;
and the second one threatens the doctor to tell; the third little pig
has to linger at home; and the fourth small porker of meat has
none; then the fifth little pig, with a querulous note, cries "weak,
weak, weak" from its poor little throat.

"oegrotat multis doloribus porculus ille:
Ille rogat fratri medicum proferre salutem:
Debilis ille domi mansit vetitus abire;
Carnem digessit nunquam miser porculus ille;
'Eheu!' ter repetens, 'eheu!' perporculus, 'eheu!'
Vires exiguas luget plorante susurro."

[131] On account of its medicinal constituents the herb has
been deservedly extolled as a specific remedy for tubercular
consumption of the lungs. Haller says: "We have seen patients in
deep declines cured by living almost entirely on this plant;" and it
forms the chief ingredient of the _Sirop Antiscorbutique _given so
successfully by the French faculty in scrofula and other allied
diseases. Its active principles are at their best when the plant is in
flower; and the amount of essential oil increases according to the
quantity of sunlight which the leaves obtain, the proportion of iron
being determined according to the quality of the water, and the
measure of phosphates by the supply of dressing afforded. The
leaves remain green when grown in the shade, but become of a
purple brown because of their iron when exposed to the sun. The
expres