This litchen spreads on the ground, and is of a leather like substance, veined, ash coloured, appearing as if covered with flour, woolly underneath, divided into lobes, peltæ, round or oblong, termipal, hard, ascending, of a reddish brown colour, and serrated, with small star like flowers at the top: the roots are very fine and small. HISTORY. It is found on heaths, dry pastures, and in the woods. MEDICAL VIRTUES. This is the litchen of which doctor Mead's celebrated powder is made, and which has been so justly recommended as a sure and effectual cure for the hydrophobia, or canine madness, caused by the bite of a mad dog. Doctor Mead's pulvis antylissus, is as follows: In English-take of ash coloured liverwort, in fine powder, four drachms, fine black pepper, two drachms, and mix them together. Divide this into four equal doses, one of which is to be taken in warm milk, every morning fasting, for four mornings successively. After using all the powders, the patient must be put in a cold bath, every morning fasting for thirty days. He is to remain in the bath, with his head above water, not more than one minute. PREPARATION. The following ointment will cure all fresh wounds or thrusts. Pound the leaves of liverwort while green, and press out the juice: then to one quart of the expressed juice, add one pound of fresh butter, made in June, and eight ounces of mutton tallow: let it simmer over the hot embers, in an carthen pipkin, for an hour, when you may add four ounces of hoes-wax and two ounces of sugar, and let it simmer for half an hour: strain it through a linen cloth, and put it in pots covered with a piece of dry bladder, for use. Melt a little of this ointment and dip lint into it, which must be put into the wound and covered with a linen cloth doubled, and anointed with the warm ointment. which must be renewed three times a day until the wound is healed. A poultice made of slipperyelm bark, may be applied over the dressing, for a day or two until the inflammation has subsided. This is a small tree: in swamps you may find it from eight to ten feet in height, but on mountains not more than four. www HISTORY. It grows in swamps and on the mountains in New-Jersey, and other parts of America. MEDICAL VIRTUES. I have found the bark to be an effectual remedy in the cure of chronic rheumatism; and the berries are a sure remedy in intermittent fevers. PREPARATION. Boil four ounces of the bark in six quarts of water down to three for rheumatic pains take half a pint of this decoction three times a day, and when going to bed drop a tea-spoonful of the essence of hemlock into half a pint of the decoction. After the pains are removed, apply a warm plaster of Burgundy pitch over the weak part, to prevent a relapse. The following powder will cure all intermittent fevers: take two ounces of dry prickly-ash bark, one ounce of the dry berries, one ounce of zantoxylum, or tooth-ach bark, one ounce of masterwort root pulverized, mix all the ingredients and sift it through a hair sieve, and put it in a bottle for use. As soon as any person is taken with the intermittent, or fever in ague, vulgarly called, let him take from thirty to forty grains of the American ipecacuanha, and work it off with weak boneset tea. After the stomach is cleansed, take a teaspoonful of the powder every two hours, in a dish of prickly-ash tea, while the fever is off. One dose generally cures a spring intermittent. The powder is to be taken for four or five days, in order to prevent a relapse. This powder should be kept in every family, where intermittent fevers prevail. AVEN'S GEUM URBANUM. DESCRIPTION. This plant rises a foot in height: root fibrous, very pleasant, and aromatic: leaves large and lyre shaped stalk upright and hirsute: flowers yellow, and terminal. 4 |