LILY. 17 



much pains and care, in order to make it produce 

 large and handsome flowers. 



The root of the common White Lily was formerly 

 esteemed valuable in medicine, but at the present 

 time we believe it is entirely disregarded by the 

 faculty, though it still holds a place in the good 

 housewife's receipts for many cures. Godorus, 

 Serjeant- surgeon to Queen Elizabeth, is said to have 

 cured many persons of the dropsy, with the juice of 

 the root mixed with barley-flower, baked in cakes, 

 and eaten with meat, instead of other bread, for 

 the space of a month. The same surgeon relates, 

 that he found by experience that the expressed 

 juice of the bruised root, given for two or three 

 days together in wine, expelled the poison of the 

 pestilence, and caused it to break out in bhsters on 

 the skin. Dr. James says, " the flowers and roots 

 are used, and that chiefly in external applications; 

 they are emollient, suppling, and anodyne, good 

 to dissolve and ripen hard tumors and swellings, 

 and to break imposthumations." The root is 

 frequently used for removing corns on the feet. 

 Waller tells us in his Domestic Herbal, 1822, it 

 has been applied externally in that species of ab- 

 scess in the throat called a quinsy. He recom- 

 mends three or four of these bulbs to be roasted in 

 the embers till they become soft, then apply them 

 to the part as hot as they can be borne ; and he 



