50 MEALS MEDICINAL. 
“ Let me tell you this,” says a practical writer of to-day: “li 
you are suffering from attacks of bronchial asthma, just send 
for a bottle of the liqueur called Anisette, and take a dram of 
it with a little hot water ; you will find it an immediate palliative ; 
you will cease barking like Cerberus; you will be soothed, and 
go to sleep. I have been bronchitic, and asthmatic for twenty 
years, and have never known an alleviative so immediately 
efficacious as anisette.’ Furthermore, its exquisite flavour 
will give a most grateful warmth, and aroma, to cold water on a 
hot summer’s day. 
Similar to the Anise plant for its fragrant aromatic virtues is 
the herb Dill (Anethum graveolens), cultivated commonly in our 
kitchen gardens for condimentary, and medicinal uses. It is an 
umbelliferous herb, bearing fruit which furnishes “ anethol,” 
a volatile empyreumatic oil like that of Anise, and Caraway. 
This pungent essential oil consists of a hydrocarbon, “ carvene,” 
together with an oxygenated oil. It is a “ gallant expeller of 
the wind, and provoker of the terms.” “‘ Limbs that are swollen 
and cold, if rubbed with the oil o’ dill are much eased, if not 
cured thereby.”” The name Dill is derived from a Saxon verb 
dilla, to lull, because of its tranquillising properties, and its 
soothing children to sleep. The cordial water distilled from 
this stomach-comforting herb is well known to every fond 
mother, and monthly nurse, as a sovereign remedy for flatulence 
in the infant. The Dill plant is grown extensively in India, 
where the seeds are put to various culinary purposes; their oil 
has a lemon-like odour, which is much esteemed. Gerarde says : 
Dill stayeth the yeox, or hicquet, as Dioscorides has taught.” 
Of the distilled water, sweetened, one or two teaspoonfuls may 
be given to a baby, in diluted milk, or with the bottle food. 
APPLE. 
Tue Apple in its composition consists of vegetable fibre, albumin, 
sugar, gum, chlorophyll, malic acid, earthy lime salts, and much 
water. German food-chemists teach that this fruit contains 
phosphates more abundantly than any other edible garden 
product. Apples also afford “lecithin”? a phosphorated com- 
pound derived chemically from glyco-phosphoric acid. The 
juice of Apples (when no cane sugar is taken with them) becomes 
converted within the body into alkaline carbonates, and will 
