CORDIALS AND RESTORATIVES. 215 
classic times! According to Dioscorides and Pliny, the Borage 
was that famous nepenthe of Homer, which Polydamas sent to 
Helen for a token, “‘ of such rare virtue that when drunk steep’d 
in wine, if wife, and children, father and mother, brother and 
sister, and all thy dearest friends should die before thy face. 
thou couldst not grieve, or shed a tear for them.” The Romans 
named Borage “ Euphrosynon,’ because when put into a cup 
of wine it made drinkers thereof merry and glad. “ Vinum 
potatum in quo sit macerata buglossa moerorem cerebri dicunt 
auferre periti”? :— 
* To enliven the sad with the joy of a joke 
Give them wine with some borage put in it to soak.” 
The fresh herb has a cucumber-like fragrance, and when com- 
pounded with lemon, and sugar, in wine, with water, it makes 
a delicious “ cool tankard,”’ which is refreshing, and restorative, 
as a summer drink. Chemically the plant contains potassium, 
and calcium, combined with mineral acids. The fresh juice 
affords 30 per cent, and the dried herb 3 per cent, of nitrate of 
potash. The stems and leaves supply much saline mucilage, 
which, when boiled, and cooled, likewise deposits nitre, and 
common salt. It is to these saline qualities the wholesome, 
invigotating effects, and the specially recruiting properties of 
the Borage are supposed to be mainly due. Botanically the 
term Borage is a corruption of Cor-ago, because this herb gives 
strength to the heart; ‘“ Quia cordis affectibus medetur.” The 
plant was the Bugloss of the older herbalists. and was so named 
from the shape, and bristly surface of its leaves. which resemble 
“ Bous-glossa,” the tongue of an ox. “Sprigs of Borage,” 
wrote John Evelyn, “are of known virtue to revive the hypo- 
chondriac, and cheer the hard student.” Parkinson adds: 
‘“ Borage helpeth nurses to have more store of milk, for which 
purpose its leaves are most conducing.” The saline constituents 
promote activity of the kidneys, and for the same reason Borage 
is used in France to carry off feverish catarrhs. “ It is a herb,” 
saith Gerarde, “ of force and virtue to drive away sorrow, and 
the pensiveness of the mind, and to comfort the heart.” (After 
which method Sir Thomas Browne reasons in his Religio Medici, 
when claiming to “cure vices by physick when they remain 
incurable by Divinity, the same obeying his pills when the 
precepts of the preachers are contemned.”) John Swan. in his 
