ave been
esteemed of signal efficacy in consumption of the lungs [466] since
the time of Avicenna, A.D. 1020, who states that he cured many
patients by prescribing as much of the conserve as they could
manage to swallow daily. It was combined with milk, or with some
other light nutriment; and generally from thirty to forty pounds of
this medicine had to be consumed before the cure was complete.
Julius Caesar hid his baldness at the age of thirty with Roman Roses.

"Take," says an old MS. recipe of Lady Somerset's, "Red Rose buds,
and clyp of the tops, and put them in a mortar with ye waight of
double refined sugar; beat them very small together, then put it up;
must rest three full months, stirring onces a day. This is good
against the falling sickness."

It is remarkable that while the blossoms of the Rose Order present
various shades of yellow, white, and red, blue is altogether foreign
to them, and unknown among them.

As the Thistle is symbolical of Scotland, the Leek of Wales, and the
Shamrock of Ireland: so the sweet, pure, simple, honest Rose of our
woods is the apt-chosen emblem of Saint George, and the frank,
bonny, blushing badge of Merrie England.

The petals of the Cabbage Rose (_Centifolia_), which are closely
folded over each other like the leaves of a cabbage, have a slight
laxative action, and are used for making Rose-water by distillation,
whether when fresh, or after being preserved by admixture with
common salt. This perfumed water has long enjoyed a reputation for
the cure of inflamed eyes, more commonly when combined with
zinc, or with sugar of lead. Hahnemann quotes the same established
practice as a tacit avowal that there exists in the leaves of the Rose
some healing power for certain diseased conditions of [567] the
eyes, which virtue is really founded on the homoeopathic property
possessed by the Rose, of exciting a species of ophthalmia in
healthy persons; as was observed by Echtius, Ledelius, and Rau.

It is recorded also in his _Organon of Medicine_, that persons are
sometimes found to faint at the smell of Roses (or, as Pope puts it,
to "die of a rose in aromatic pain"); whereas the Princess Maria,
cured her brother, the Emperor Alexius, who suffered from
faintings, by sprinkling him with Rose-water, in the presence of his
aunt Eudoxia.

The wealthy Greeks and Romans strewed Roses on the tombs of
departed friends, whilst poorer persona could only afford a tablet
at the grave bearin