HERBS, 395 
Familiar both in our gardens, and about our hedgerows, is 
the herb Tansy (tanacetum vulgare), conspicuous by heads of flat 
brilliant yellow flowers. Its leaves have a smell of camphor, 
and possess a bitter, aromatic taste; whilst young they were 
used commonly in times past, and they are still employed, when 
shredded, for flavouring cakes, puddings, and omelettes. This 
herb contains a resin, with mucilage, sugar, a fixed oil, tannin, a 
colouring matter, malic, or tanacetic acid, and water. Meat 
rubbed with the bitter Tansy will be protected from visitation 
by carrion flies. In Scotland, the dried flowers are given for 
gout: from half to one teaspoonful for a dose two or three times 
in the day ; or an infusion is made therefrom to be drunk as tea. 
This has kept inveterate gout at bay for years. With us the 
plant has a rural reputation for correcting irregularities of the 
female functional health. The name Tansy is probably derived 
from the Greek word athanasia, which signifies immortality ; 
either “quia non cito flos inflorescit,” because it lasts so long in 
flower, or “quia ejus succus vel oleum extractum cadavera a putredine 
conservat,” because it is of such service for preserving dead bodies 
from corruption. It was formerly an English custom at Easter 
for Archbishops even, for bishops, and the clergy of some churches, 
to play at hand-ball with men of their congregations, when a 
Tansy cake was given as a reward to the victors, this being a 
confection with which the bitter herb Tansy was mixed. Some 
such a corrective was thought to be of opportune benefit, after 
having lived much on fish throughout Lent. The Tansy cake 
was made from young leaves of the herb mixed with eggs. 
“This balsamic plant,’ said Boerhaave, “ will supply the 
place of nutmegs, and cinnamon.” Allied thereto is another 
old English herb, now ‘almost obsolete. except in Lincolnshire, 
to wit “‘ Costmary,” known there locally as “‘ mace.” It is the 
“ Tanacetum balsamita,” or “alecoast,” (so named because 
“put into ale to steepe”). ‘‘ The conserve,” says Gerarde, 
“made with leaves of costmaria and sugar doth warme, and dry 
the braine, and openeth the stoppings of the same; stoppeth 
all catarrhes, rheumes, and distillations, taken in the quantitie 
of a beane. The leaves of costmarie boyled in wine and drunken, 
cure the griping paine of the belly, the guts, and bowels, and 
cureth the bloudy flix.” The whole plant is of a pleasant smell, 
savour, or taste. Some of the villages near the city of Lincoln, ae a 
for example Burton, and its neighbouring hamlets, are singular ae 
