This plant rises three or four feet in height : leaves large, ovate, serrated, full of nitted veins, midrib large, fleshy, and the upper leaves are sessile: flowers very large, yellow, terminal: the florets in the way ligulate, cut in the end into three sharp teeth.

HISTORY.

It is a very large downy perennial plant, grows wild in old stony pastures and by the road side : flowers in July and August; and the root when dry has an agreeable aromatic smell.

MEDICAL VIRTUES.

The root is an excellent pectoral, and is beneficial in coughs, and the hooping cough in children. They are alexipharmic, expectorant, attenuant, laxative, stomachic, diuretic and diaphoretic. They attenuate viscid phlegm, promote expectoration, relieve humoural coughs and asthmas, excite urine and insensible perspiration, gently loosen the bowels, strengthens the stomach, and the tone of the viscera.

PREPARATION.

A tea-spoonful of the pulverized root, taken three times a day in molasses, and a daily use of the following decoction: boil one pound of the dry root in six quarts of rain water away to three, strain it and sweeten it with loaf sugar, or honey: a tea-cup full to be taken every night and morning, in the cure of the above mentioned diseases.

The following sirup has proved effectual in breaking an inward imposthume on the lungs, and cured a person labouring under a violent consumptive cough. Take elecampane root half a pound, comfree root half a pound and slippery elm bark one pound; boil all the ingredients in six quarts of rain water down to three; strain the decoction, and put two quarts of molasses in it: then boil it away to the consistance of honey: dose, a wine glass taken four times a day in all coughs, will be found beneficial.

This is a small tree and rises ten feet in height: leaves are pinnated, composed of several pinnæ which are lance shaped, obtusely sawed, smooth above, hairy beneath, end swith anodd leaf and the common foot stalk is somewhat winged: flowers small and bundled together in a long spike, terminating in a long bunch of red sour berries: the roots are lactesant.

HISTORY.

This species of sumach grows on high lands, and is the species that is used for tanning leather. There is another species of sumach which grows in swamps, that is not fit for medicine on account of its poisonous qualities.

MEDICAL VIRTUES.

I have found it beneficial in curing the dysentery and rheumatic pains, and is good to stop the incontinency of urine in children.

PREPARATION.

Boil a gill of the berries in a pint of rum; strain it after it has boiled an hour, and give the child from one tea-spoonful to a table spoonful every night at bed time, increasing the dose according to its age till the dabetes is stopped. For the dysentery and other fluxes, boil four ounces of the berries in four quarts rain water down to two; strain the liquor and dissolve two ounces of loaf sugar in it and add a gill of brandy. After having taken a dose of rhubarb, give the child a tea-cup full warm every two hours until cured.

For rheumatic complaints observe the following cure, discovered in a dream by a very pious baptist elderly lady whom I visited, labouring under violent rheumatic complaints, which caused her to use crutches: take four ounces of the fresh milky roots of upland sumach cut small, boil them in three pints of rum over the coals for one hour, then strain and apply flannels wet with this decoction over the hips, knees, or back, every hour until well. This proved effectual, according to the old lady's dream, in curing her in a few days. I applied a strengthening plaster warm over the part affected.

This is a very large tree covered with a smooth slippery bark: leaves ovate, rough, double serrated, alternate, and are upon short peduncles: flowers precede the leaves: seed round and somewhat compressed.

HISTORY.

It grows in swamps and on the borders of meadows, in every part of the United States, and in great abundance in the Indian Nation, and West Florida.