ants is excellent in fevers, and acts as an anti-putrescent;
as likewise if taken at table with venison, or hare, or other "high"
meats. This fruit especially suits persons of sanguine temperament.
Both red and white Currants are without doubt trustworthy
remedies in most forms of obstinate visceral obstruction, and they
correct impurities of the blood, being certainly antiseptic.

[139] The black Currant is found growing wild in England, for the
most part by the edges of brooks, and in moist grounds, from
mid-Scotland southwards. Throughout Sussex and Kent the shrub is
called "Gazles" as corrupted from the French _Groseilles_
(Gooseberries). The fruit is cooling, laxative, and anodyne. Its
thickened juice concocted over the fire, with, or without sugar,
formed a "rob" of Old English times. The black Currant is often
named by our peasantry "Squinancy," or "Quinsyberry," because a
jelly prepared therefrom has been long employed for sore throat
and quinsy. The leaf glands of its young leaves secrete from their
under surface a fragrant odorous fluid. Therefore if newly
gathered, and infused for a moment in very hot water and then
dried, the leaves make an excellent substitute for tea; also these
fresh leaves when applied to a gouty part will assuage pain, and
inflammation. They are used to impart the flavour of brandy to
common spirit. Bergius called the leaf, _mundans, pellens, et
diuretica_. Botanically the black Currant, _Ribes nigrum_, belongs
to the Saxifrage tribe, this generic term Ribes being applied to all
fresh currants, as of Arabian origin, and signifying acidity.
Grocers' currants come from the Morea, being small grapes dried
in the sun, and put in heaps to cake together. Then they are dug out
with a crow-bar, and trodden into casks for exportation. Our
national plum pudding can no more be made without these currants
than "little Tom Tucker who for his supper, could cut his
bread without any knife or could find himself married without any
wife." Former cooks made an odd use of grocers' currants,
according to King, a poet of the middle ages, who says:--

"They buttered currants on fat veal bestowed,
And rumps of beef with virgin honey strewed."

[140] On the kitchen Currant a riddling rhyme was long ago to be
found in the _Children's Book of Conundrums_:--

"Higgledy-piggledy, here I lie
Picked and plucked, and put in a pie;
My first is snapping, snarling, growling;
My second nois