This plant rises from two to four feet in height: resembling a shrub, and sending out hollow woody stems: leaves in alternate order, compound, composed of several pairs, oval, pointed, and nerved: pinnæ of a yellowish green colour: flowers yellow, forming a spike, consisting of five petals : the pod is curved and short.

HISTORY.

MEDICAL VIRTUES.

It has been customary to reject the pedicles of the leaves of senna, but this is mere prejudice, for ⚫ both leaves and pedicles act in the same way. The American senna operates milder than the senna that is imported, but must be given in a larger dose.

PREPARATION.

Pour a pint of boiling water on eight drachms of American senna, and put a tea-spoonful of ginger, or the powder of masterwort root to it; let it stand in the pot for fifteen minutes for use; children may take one or two tea-cups full twice a day, sweetened with milk in it, which will prove a mild purge without griping; adults may take a desert-spoonful of the powder with a tea-spoonful of ginger, night and morning, as a safe and gentle purge. The following electuary is an excellent laxative for loosening the belly in costive habits : take of senna leaves powdered six ounces, masterwort or ginger powdered one ounce, pulp of French pruens one pound, puip of tamarinds two ounces, molasses a pint and an half, essential oil of caraway two drachms: boil the pulps in the molasses to the consistence of honey, then add the powders, and when the mixture cools put in the oil, and mix the whole intimately: dose, a tea-spoonful twice a day, in order to keep the body soluble.

This plant rises from seven to nine inches in height: leaves heart shape, entire, pointed, veined, and are upon foot-stalks: flowers of a purplish brwon colour: base globular, the middle contracted, and twisted, and the extremity spreading.

HISTORY.

It grows throughout the United States, in woods and on the banks of meadows: flowers in August.

MEDICAL VIRTUES.

This root is a very warm cordial aromatic, and as a diaphoretic and operates diuretic: it is a good cordial medicine in supporting the strength of life.

and promotes a free perspiration in low and putrid feverst: it is very efficacious mixt with the bark, in the cure of intermittent fevers: ten grains in three drachms of the powder, given with five drops of laudanum every three hours, has prevented the mortification of a fractured limb.

PREPARATION.

Take of snake root sliced and bruised three ounces, good old rum one quart, keep it in a covered earthen pot by the fire for five days, and strain the tincture for use: dose, a table-spoonful twice a day, as a diaphoretic in low stages of fevers. In confluent small pox, when sores appear gangrene, and the powers of life appear sunk, take the following mixture: bruised snake root four drachms, boiling water one pint, tincture of snake root two drachms, and sirup of ginger four drachms: dose, two table-spoonsful to be taken every three hours, in the above complaints.

This plant rises about two feet in height: leaves numerous and lanceolate: flowers white, terminating in a long pod which contains the seed: the roots white and bushy, and consist of many fibres.

HISTORY.

This useful plant grows in moist meadows and low grounds, in New-Jersey and on Long-Island.

MEDICAL VIRTUES.

It is a powerful sudorific, diuretic and pectoral: it has also been found beneficial in the cure of the pleurisy and suppression of urine.