BIND WEED, GREATER: OR

MAN IN THE GROUND.

CONVOLVULUS PANDURATUS, MAJOR.

This plant is a foot in height, and runs along the ground much like a grape vine: root very large, hard, and white, running very deep in the earth, and is very similar to a man's penis, whence the Indians call it the man in the earth: stalks weak and trailing, from one to three feet high, and beset with triangular leaves: flowers, which grow from the axilla of these, are large, bell shaped, and

whitish with a purple tinge: the seed vessel is of a pointed form, and the seed is angular and blackish.

HISTORY.

It grows in low grounds, nigh running water, and in loose sandy soils. I dug a root from a buckwheat field, in New-Jersey, near the Deleware river, as large as a man's leg, which ran four feet in the ground. Finding the parts to have so much the resemblance of a man's penis, &c. I gave it to a physician in New-York, as a curiosity.

MEDICAL VIRTUES.

The fresh root cut in thin slices, and infused in spring or rain water, for twelve hours, and the patient taking a tea-cup full four or five times a day, has carried off the urine, and brought away gravel; and has also been found beneficial in recent consumptive coughs and asthmas; is a good pectoral, and a mild and sure cathartic. A tablespoonful of the powdered root may be taken twice a week as a cathartic, in dropsies.

PREPARATION.

Take two pounds of this root bruised, and one pound of bruised skunk cabbage root, both dryed: boil them in eight quarts of spring or rain water, to the consumption of four: strain the decoction through a piece of linen, to which add two quarts of honey, and boil the sirup until there remains but

three quarts, when you must put it in a stone jug, to be used in the following manner.

In all consumptive or asthmatic coughs, the patient may take a wine glass full of this liquor, daily four or five times a day, and use the following tea: pour a quart of boiling water on an ounce of the bruised dry root of skunk cabbage, and sweeten it with honey. Dose, a tea-cup full three times a day.

An Indian, after wetting his hands with the milky juice of this root, handled a living rattle snake without receiving the least injury.

This plant rises eight or ten feet in height, and entwines round trees the same as a vine: flowers in loose clusters, always turning against the sun and leaves, and seems to avoid the sun: the corolla is composed of one petal, wheel shaped, and divided at the bottom or border, into five pointed segments, which are bent back: colour purple: prominences like dots surrounding the rim of the corolla, form the nectary. The yellow anthers make a beautiful contrast to the corolla. The flowers be

come bright red berries, something similar to cur rants, and are of a bitter sweet taste.

HISTORY.

This climbing shrub grows common in low grounds and marshes.

MEDICAL VIRTUES.

The dulcamara is a powerful and useful medicine it increases all the secretions and excretions, and excites the heart and arteries; and is also beneficial in all cutaneous affections, rheumatism, cathartic swellings, ill conditioned ulcers, scrophula, whites, jaundice, and obstructed menses. Cancers of the breast have been cured by the application of the juice over the cancer, and the green leaves applyed over the breast.

The celebrated professor Doctor Hallar, by this application, perfected a cure of the cancer, on the breast of a lady of seventy years of age.

PREPARATION.

Boil half a pound of the bark of the bitter sweet in eight quarts of spring water, to the consumption of one gallon: a gill to be taken three times a day: it is also good in fevers and sical swellings. The patient ought to take a dose of sal glauber once a week, while using the medicine.