sed juice, which contains the peculiar taste and pungency of
the herb, may be taken in doses of from one to two fluid ounces at
each of the three principal meals, and it should always be had
fresh. When combined with the juice of Scurvy grass and of
Seville oranges it makes the popular antiscorbutic medicine known
as "Spring juices."

A Water-cress cataplasm applied cold in a single layer, and with a
pinch of salt sprinkled thereupon makes a most useful poultice to
heal foul scrofulous ulcers; and will also help to resolve glandular
swellings.

Water-cresses squeezed and laid against warts were said by the
Saxon leeches to work a certain cure on these excrescences. In
France the Water-cress is dipped in oil and vinegar to be eaten at
table with chicken or a steak. The Englishman takes it at his
morning or evening meal, with bread and butter, or at dinner in a
salad. It loses some of its pungent flavour and of its curative
qualities [132] when cultivated; and therefore it is more appetising
and useful when freshly gathered from natural streams. But these
streams ought to be free from contamination by sewage matter, or
any drainage which might convey the germs of fever, or other
blood poison: for, as we are admonished, the Water-cress plant
acts as a brush in impure running brooks to detain around its stalks
and leaves any dirty disease-bringing flocculi.

Some of our leading druggists now make for medicinal use a
liquid extract of the _Nasturtium officinale_, and a spirituous juice
(or _succus_) of the plant. These preparations are of marked
service in scorbutic cases, where weakness exists without wasting,
and often with spongy gums, or some skin eruption. They are best
when taken with lemon juice.

The leaf of the unwholesome Water parsnep, or Fool's Cress,
resembles that of the Water-cress, and grows near it not infrequently:
but the leaves of the true Water-cress never embrace the stem
of the plant as do the leaf stalks of its injurious imitators.
Herrick the joyous poet of "dull Devonshire" dearly loved the
Water-cress, and its kindred herbs. He piously and pleasantly
made them the subject of a quaint grace before meat:--

"Lord, I confess too when I dine
The pulse is Thine:
And all those other bits that be
There placed by Thee:
The wurts, the perslane, and the mess
of Water-cress."

The true _Nasturtium_ (_Tropoeolum majus_), or greater Indian
Cress grows and is culti