720 MEALS MEDICINAL. 
decreases. Preserved Walnuts serve for obviating constipation, 
one of these being sufficiently laxative for a child. Allow half 
a pound of sugar to each score of green Walnuts. Pierce the 
nuts with a needle, and put them into a stone jar, with the sugar. 
Stand the jar in a deep saucepan of boiling water, and allow the 
contents to continue boiling steadily for three hours, taking care 
that none of the water gets into the jar; the sugar being dissolved 
should cover the walnuts. When done tie them down, and in 
six months the preserve will be ready for use. Walnut leaves 
are of notable benefit for helping to cure secondary sores, even 
when otherwise obstinate; these sores should be coated with 
sugar saturated with a strong decoction of the bruised fresh 
leaves, and must be well cleansed between the times of thus 
dressing them. 
Walnut catsup embodies the medicinal virtues of the unripe 
nuts, and will help their curative purposes, if used as a condiment 
at table. To make this, the unripe nuts, before their shells 
harden, are beaten to a pulp, and the juice is then separated by 
straining ; salt, vinegar and spices are added, and the whole is 
gently boiled. The leaves of the American Black Walnut tzee, 
which grows naturally in Virginia, are of the highest curative 
value for treating scrofulous sores, and eruptions on the skin. 
Chronic indolent ulcers have been healed by them after every 
other tried application had failed. An ounce of the fresh leaves 
(or rather less of the dried leaves) should be infused in twelve 
ounces of boiling water, to stand for six hours, and then to be 
strained off. A small wineglassful of the infusion to be taken 
three times a day, and the sore places to be dressed with linen 
soaked in another such infusion, but made of double strength. 
Or, an extract may be made from a strong decoction of the leaves, 
slowly reduced to a proper thick consistence, four grains thereof 
rolled into a small bolus each night and morning. The Virginian 
Walnuts are twice as large as those grown in England, being 
more rank and oily, with a thick, hard, adherent shell, so that 
“* they come not clear of the husk as the Walnut in France doth.” 
Pepys, on September 29th (Lord’s-day, 1660), at the Hope Tavern, 
with Mr. Chaplin, and two other friends, did drink off two or 
three quarts of wine, and did eat about two hundred walnuts.” 
In Flanders, against ague, the sick person catches a large black 
spider, and imprisons it between the two halves of a Walnut- 
shell, then wearing it round the neck. 
