572 MEALS MEDICINAL. 
PLUMS. 
THE Sloe, or wild Plum, borne by our Blackthorn of the hedge- 
rows, is well known as an oval, blue-black, small fruit, of autumn 
produce, harsh, and sour until mellowed by the early frosts. 
Its dark ruby juice enters largely into the manufacture of 
British Port wine. If obtained by expression of the Sloes this 
juice is very useful as an astringent medicine, and is a popular 
remedy for stopping nose-bleeding. Country people bury the 
Sloes in jars to preserve them for winter use; they should be 
gathered on a dry day, picked clean, and put into jars, or bottles, 
without any boiling, or other such process, and then covered 
with loaf sugar; a tablespoonful of brandy should be presently 
added, and the jar sealed. By Christmas the syrup formed by 
the juice, the sugar, and the spirit, will have covered, and saturated 
the fruit ; so that then a couple of tablespoontfuls will not only 
serve as an agreeable dessert liqueur, but will further act as an 
astringent cordial of a very useful sort. The Sloe bush is often 
called provincially “Scroggs.” Sloe leaves, when they unfold 
late in the spring, will, if dried, make a very good substitute for 
foreign tea. The blossoms answer for preparing a safe, harmless, 
laxative syrup excellent for children; by taking a spoonful 
or two daily for three, or four days, costiveness will be overcome 
gently, and painlessly, but thoroughly. 
The hard, round Bullace (Prunus insititia) grows likewise in 
our English hedgerows, this being the fruit (five times as big 
as the Sloe) of a shrub having fewer thorns. Country folk make 
therefrom Bullace wine; and boys in France call both fruits 
(equally astringent) “ Sibarelles,” because it is so difficult to 
whistle immediately after masticating them. Wild Plums in 
Devonshire are Kestings. or Gristlings. 
The cultivated Plum has been developed from the Sloe, and 
wild Plum ; its Damson variety being formerly the fruit product 
of Damascus, (Damascenes). When ripe the cultivated Plums 
are cooling, and slightly laxative, especially the French fruit, 
which is dried, and bottled for dessert. Philip Dormer, the 
famous Lord Chesterfield, in one of the well-known letters to 
his son then at Paris (1757), told him: “Lord Bacon, who 
Was a very great physician in both senses of the word, hath this 
aphorism in his essay on ‘ Health’: ‘ Nihil magis ad sanitatem 
tribuit quam crebre et domestice purgationes’ : by domestice 
