PREPARATION.

Put two handsful of hog-weed in three quarts of spring water, boil it down to two quarts: strain the decoction and add one pint of old rum to it In order to promote the courses, the patient may take a tea-cup full of the decoction three times a day, about the time of the moon when they want to flow, and at bed time drink a tea-cup full warm, and let the patient sit over the steam of catnip and penny-royal every night for ten minutes, until they are brought down.

HOLY THISTLE.

CARDUS BENEDICTUS.

DESCRIPTION.

This plant rises two feet in height: leaves long, eliptical, variously serrated, barbed with sharp points, the top of the leaf is a bright green, under side whitish and nitted, the upper ones are sessile and the lower ones are on foot-stalks: flowers inclosed with an involucre of ten leaves: florets yellow and the seeds are crowned.

HISTORY.

This is an annual plant, cultivated in our gardens for its beauty, flowers in July, and the seeds are ripe in October. The leaves should be gathered when in flower, dryed in the shade and put up in paper bags for use.

MEDICAL VIRTUES.

It is stomachic, sudorific, and is beneficial in the hooping cough. The following is a safe and sure emetic for weakly people.

PREPARATION.

Boil two ounces of the dry leaves of the thistle in two quarts of rain water down to one: a gill of the strained liquor may be taken in the morning, fasting, and if it does not puke the patient in half an hour, take a little more until it operates, and work it off with a weak tea made by pouring a quart of boiling water ou an ounce of the herb: a tea-cup full to be drank after every emotion upwards. As a sweating medicine, a wine glass full of the strong decoction may be taken every two hours in bed.

The following is an excellent bitter: infuse four ounces of the dry herb in two quarts of cold spring water all night, and take a tea-cup full of this pleasant bitter before breakfast and dinner; it acts as a tonic and creates a good appetite, it is also good in fevers, sharpened with ten or twelve drops of elixer vitriol in each dose, taken on an empty stomach.

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This common useful plant rises about a foot in height leaves deeply serrated, veined, wrinkled, hoary, in pairs and standing upon long thick broad foot-stalks: flowers white, in whorles, and the calyx is cut in ten segments, which are hooked at the apex: lower lip of the corolla divided into three segments, the largest is emarginate, and the upper lip is two-cleft.

HISTORY.

It is a perennial plant and grows wild along the road sides, &c. in abundance, throughout the United States: flowers in July.

MEDICAL VIRTUES.

The leaves are aperient and deobstrucnt; they promote the fluid secretions in general, and drank

freely obviate costiveness, are beneficial in moist asthmas, coughs, yellow jaundice, cachexy, menstrual obstructions, dropsy, and are good to destroy An infusion of the leaves is good to carry off a salivation.

worms.

PREPARATION.

For the cure of the above complaints, the patient must take a gill of the expressed juice every morning fasting, in half a pint of new milk fresh from the cow. In order to promote the menses, take a spoonful twice a day of the leaves powdered, and a tea-cup full of the infusion of an handful of the dry leaves and tops, put in a tea-pot and filled with boiling water.