228 MEALS MEDICINAL. 
laid against warts were reputed by the Saxon leeches to work a 
certain cure on these excrescences. Herrick, the joyous poet 
of “dull Devonshire,” dearly loved the Water Cress, and its 
kindred herbs. He piously and pleasantly made them the 
subject of a quaint grace before meat :— 
** Lord, I confess, too, when I dine, 
The pulse is Thine ; 
And all those other bits that be 
There placed by Thee : 
The wurts, the perslane, and the mess 
Of watercress.” 
Persons who drink too freely overnight, appreciate the Water 
Cress for its power of dissipating the fumes of the liquor next 
morning. 
The Garden Cress (called Lepidiwm sativum, from satum, a 
pasture) is the sort which is commonly coupled with the herb 
Mustard in our familiar “ Mustard and Cress.” It has been 
grown in England since early in the sixteenth century, and its 
other name, Town Cress, refers to its being cultivated in “ tonnes,” 
or enclosures. The plant contains sulphur, and a special ardent 
volatile medicinal oil. Its small leaves, in combination with 
those of our white Garden Mustard, are excellent for relieving 
rheumatism, and gout. This Cress is further a preventive of 
scurvy, by reason of its mineral salts. “ Being green,” said 
_ Wm. Coles, in his Paradise of Plants (1650), “and therefore 
more qualified by reason of its humidity, the Garden Cress is 
eaten by country people, either alone with butter, or with lettice, 
and purslane, in sallets, or otherwise.” It was known of old 
as “* Passerage ” (from passer, to drive away, and rage, madness) 
because of its reputed power to expel hydrophobia. Thus the 
. twin plants Mustard and Cress are happily consorted for 
invalid use, playing a common curative part like the “ two 
single gentlemen rolled into one” of George Colman the younger. 
As already stated, they are especially rich in curative volatile 
salts during April and May. By a fortunate correspondence 
it is in the spring time that scrofulous and scorbutic affections 
become most active, because of the bodily humours being then 
in a ferment. “ How to know ye King’s Evill,” as stated in the 
Arcana Fairfaxiana (1610), “is to take a grounde worme alive. 
and lay him upon ye swelling, or sore, and cover him with a 
leafe. Yi it be ye disease ye worme will change, and turn into 
earth ; yf it be not, he will remain whole, and sounde.” 
