MEDICAL VIRTUES.

It is an excellent escharotic, a detergent, and taken internally is diuretic and sudorific. The bruised green leaves have been applied to foul ve

nereal ulcers as an escharotic.

PREPARATION.

Pour a pint of boiling water on three drachms of the dry leaves. In all venereal sores or cutaneous eruptions, the patient may take a gill three times a day of this infusion, and wash the sores with the liquor, which has cured venereal ulcers, and other foulness of the skin, of long standing.

VERVIAN, OR VERVAIN.

VIRBENA OFFICINALIS.

DESCRIPTION.

This plant rises two feet in height: leaves broad and long, those next the ground deeply gashed, of a blackish colour on the upper side, and somewhat grey underneath: stalks square: flowers on the tops of the stalks, of a blueish colour with white intermixed, after which come small round seed in small and somewhat long heads: roots long and small.

HISTORY.

It grows by the road sides, in old pastures, &c. throughout the United States.

MEDICAL VIRTUES.

It has been found beneficial in the cure of intermittents and scrophula, opens obstructions of the viscera, promotes the menses, and is good in gravelly complaints, coughs, and wheezings, and expels worms.

PREPARATION.

For the cure of ulcers observe the following new discovery: boil one pound of the dry leaves and roots in six quarts of rain water, to the consumption of one half: strain the decoction: take half a pint three times a day, wash the sore with the decoction three times a day, and apply a piece of bohea tea lead, the side next the tea, over the sore, and change the lead every three days, in a short time the ulcer will be healed.

If there is any proud flesh about the sore, sprinkle a little red precipitate powder over it, which soon consumes it.

For the cure of the fever and ague, the patient may take fasting forty grains of American ipecacuanha, to cleanse the stomach: the next day before the fit, drink a pint of the decoction warm, and go to bed, continuing the decoction, half a pint every hour, in order to create perspiration. This will effect a cure without the aid of barks, seldom having a fit after the first dose. Take a glass of bitters, every morning for a week, for fear of a relapse.

This beautiful tree grows in moist woods and swamps in abundance, throughout the United States, and is so well known by its large white flowers, which appear in May, that in needs no description.

MEDICAL VIRTUES.

The bark of the root dried and pulverized, answers the same intention as the peruvian bark, which I was an eye witness to last war. A young man was shot by an Indian, and received two bullets which entered below the shoulder blade and

came out at the side of his breast, was perfectly cured in five weeks, by the use of slippery-elm bark as a poultice, and taking daily the extract of dogwood made into pills. The dry flowers of dogwood pulverized, and a tea-spoonful given frequently, has cured remittent fevers: they are an excellent tonic and febrifuge.

PREPARATION.'

The following prescription has cured the pain in the breast: boil two handsful of the white flowers of dogwood, in a quart of rain water down to a pint, strain the decoction, and add a quart of port wine to the strained liquor: dose, a wine glass three times a day, and apply a plaster of burgundy pitch spread on leather, warm on the breast bone, or below where the pain is.

To make the burgundy pitch, you must split the pitch pine knots very small, and boil them in a large kettle, until the pitch rises on the top, then take a round green stick, as thick as the wrist, with the bark peeled off, and dip it in and out of the kettle into a pail of cold water alternately, until you have got all the pitch. This is preferable to that imported as a plaster for back-ach and all rheumatic pains, by dissolving camphor in it when melted.