BARLEY. 79 
for sore, relaxed throat. Barberry tea, concocted from the 
yellow bark, will afford prompt relief in-an attack of kidney 
colic from gravel. Some of it should be drunk in small quantities 
every five minutes until the pain is subdued. Such a tea of 
infused Barberry twigs is used locally in Lincolnshire for persons 
troubled with jaundice, or gall-stones. 
“The good Elizabethan housewife had always by her a store 
of cordials, and restoratives, such as rose-water and treacle, 
kerbs for the ague, fumitory water for the liver, cool salads, 
syrups and conserves of Quince, and Barberry.” A drink made 
from the Barberry root, and bark, being sweetened with syrup 
of Barberries, has proved remarkably curative of ague. Also a 
jam, or jelly, prepared from the fruit, affords specific help in 
Bright’s disease, or albuminuria. Provincially the bush is 
called “* Pipperidge (pepin, a pip, and rouge, red) because of its 
small, scarlet, juiceless fruit. To make Barberry jam, according 
to a good old recipe: “Pick the fruit from the stalks, and 
bake it in an earthen pan; then press it through a sieve with 
a wooden spoon. Having mixed equal weights of the prepared: 
fruit, and of powdered white sugar, put these together in pots, 
and cover the mixture up, setting them in a dry place, and 
having sifted some powdered sugar over the top of each pot.” 
Barberries are called “ Rapperdandies” in the North, and 
“ Rilts.” The ancient Egyptians made a drink from them 
highly esteemed in pestilential fevers. ‘‘ Elusius setteth it down 
as a wonderful secret which he had from a friend, that if the 
yellow bark of Barberry be steeped in white wine for three hours, 
and be afterwards drunk, it will purge one very marvellously,”’ 
thus unloading an oppressed liver. The berries upon old 
Barberry bushes are the best fruit for preserving, or for making 
the jelly. 
BARLEY. 
Hordeum vulgare, or Common Barley, affords a grain chiefly 
used in Great Britain for brewing, and distilling, but which 
possesses dietetic, and medicinal virtues of importance. We 
fatten our swine on this cereal made into meal, which is, however, 
less nourishing than wheaten flour, and is apt to purge when 
- eaten in bread. The chemical constituents of Barley are starch, 
gluten, albumin, oil, and hordeic acid. From the earliest times 
it has been employed to prepare drinks for the sick, whether in 
