262 MEALS MEDICINAL. 
The candy may still be had from our leading confectioners, but 
scarcely containing, it is to be supposed, any more of the Elecam- 
pane than their barley sugar does now-a-days of barley. 
Chemically the roots, from which this candy is made, include a 
camphoraceous principle, helenin, and a starch known as “ inulin,” 
most sparingly soluble, together with a volatile oil, another resin, 
albumin, and acetic acid. The inulin is a powerful antiseptic 
to arrest putrefaction ; the helenin relieves chronic bronchitis, 
and soreness inside the nostrils. Moreover, this latter principle 
of Elecampane is said to be peculiarly destructive to the bacillus 
connected with consumptive disease of the lungs. In classic 
times the poet Horace told how Fundanius made a delicate 
sauce in which the bitter inula was boiled, and how the Roman 
stomach when surfeited by an excess of rich viands pined for 
plain turnips, and the appetising Enulas acidas from frugal 
Campania :— 
**Quum rapula plenus 
Atque acidas mavult inulas.”' 
Prior to the Norman Conquest, and during the Middle Ages, 
the root of Elecampane was much employed medicinally in Great 
Britain. Though now found but infrequently as of local growth 
in our copses, and meadows, yet it is cultivated in private herb 
gardens as a culinary, and medicinal plant. 
ELECTRIC PHYSICAL EFFECTS. 
“ Know,” saith John Swan, (Speculum Mundi 1643), “ that the 
horn of a Unicorne hath many sovereigne virtues, and with an 
admirable dexteritie expelleth poyson, insomuch that being put 
upon a table furnished with many junkets, and banqueting dishes, 
. will quickly decrie whether there be any poyson amongst 
them.” 
“ Inshort (Night side of Nature, Catherine Crowe, as far back as 
in 1848), “we are the subjects, and so is every thing around us 
of all manner of subtle, and inexplicable influences; and if our 
ancestors attached too much importance to these ill understood 
arcana of the night side of nature, we have attached too little. 
The sympathetic effects of multitudes on each other, of the young 
sleeping with the old, of magnetism on plants, and animals, are 
now acknowledged facts. May not many other asserted pheno- 
mena that we yet laugh at, be facts also ? though probably too 
