260 MEALS MEDICINAL. 
eating-houses about town” (1680). The great Boerhaave (1720) 
always took off his hat through respect when passing an Elder 
bush. Nevertheless this exhales an unpleasant soporific smell 
which is said to impair the health of persons sleeping under 
its shade. “They do make tooth-pickers, and spoons of 
Elder-wood, to which they attribute much in preservation 
from the pain of toothache.” Curiously enough an old English 
proverb ran to this effect : “ Laurel for a garland, Elder for a 
disgrace.” 
Sir Thomas Browne has told among his Vulgar Errors (1646), 
“that Elderberries are poisonous (as we are taught by tradition) 
experience will unteach us.” At the Christmas Party, Dingley 
Dell, graphically described in Pickwick: “ Long after the ladies 
had retired to bed did the hot Elder wine, well qualified with 
brandy and spice, go round, and round, and round again: and 
sound was the sleep, and pleasant were the dreams that followed.” 
Formerly the creamy Elder blossoms were beaten up in the batter 
of flannel cakes, and muffins, to which they gave a more delicate 
texture. They were also boiled in gruel as a fever-drink, and 
were added to the posset of the Christening feast. In Anatomie 
of the Elder (1655), it is stated: “the common people keep as a 
great secret in curing wounds the leaves of the Elder (which they 
have gathered the last day of April). Likewise make powder of 
the flowers of Elder gathered on a Midsummer day, being first 
well dryed, and use a spoonful thereof in a good draught of 
Borage water, morning and evening, first and last for the space 
of a month, and it will make you seem young a great while.” 
From Elder flowers a gently stimulating ointment may be 
prepared with lard, for dressing burns and scalds; also another 
such ointment concocted from green Elderberries with camphor 
and lard, has been formerly ordered by the London College of 
Surgeons for the relief of piles. Thus “the leaves of Elder boiled 
soit, with a little linseed oil added thereto, if then laid upon a 
piece of scarlet, or red cloth, and applied to the piles as hot as 
this can be suffered, being removed when cold, and replaced by 
one such cloth after another upon the diseased part, by the space 
of an hour, and in the end some bound to the place, and the 
patient put then to bed; this hath not yet failed at the first 
dressing to cure the disease, but if the patient be dressed twice 
therewith it must needs cure them if the first fail.” ‘It were 
likewise profitable for the scabby if they made a sallet of those 
