n FLORA HISTORICA. 



they bestow much pains and care, in order to 

 make it produce large and handsome flowers. 



The root of the common White Lily was for- 

 merly 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. Go- 

 dorus, 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, and 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 ex- 

 perience, 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 blisters on the skin. 

 Dr. James says, *' the flowers and roots ar.e 

 used, and that chiefly in external apphcations ; 

 they are emollient, suppling, and anodyne, good 

 to dissolve and ripen hard tumors and swellings, 

 and to break imposthumations." The root is fre- 

 quently used for removing corns on the feet. 

 Waller tells us in his Domestic Herbal, 1822, it 

 has been applied externally in that species of 

 abscess in the throat called a quinsy. He re- 

 commends three or four of these bulbs to be 



