oS | 
applied, and a dose of two drops sometimes exciting fatal inflammation along the 
whole alimentary tract. 
This genus was known to the ancient physicians as Boatpaywor (Bratrachion). 
Hippocrates, Paulus A%gineta, and Dioscorides spoke of various species, the latter 
using them as external applications for the removal of psora, leprous nails, steoto- 
matous and other tumors, as well as fomentations to chilblains, and in toothache. 
Galen, Paulus, and the physicians of Arabia, all speak highly of the plants as 
powerful escharotics; and the Bedouins use them as rubefacients. 
Gerarde says: “There be divers sorts or kinds of these pernitious herbes 
comprehended under the name of Ranunculus or Crowfoote, whereof most are 
very dangerous to be taken into the body, and therefore they require a very 
exquisite moderation, with a most exact and due manner of tempering; not any 
of them are to be taken alone by themselves, because they are of a most violent 
force, and therefore have the great nede of correction. The knowledge of these 
plants is as necessarie to the phisition as of other herbes, to the end they may 
shun the same, as Scribonius Largus saith, and not take them ignorantly, or also 
if necessitie at any time require that they may use them, and that with some 
deliberation and special choice and with their proper correctives. For these dan- 
gerous simples are likewise many times of themselves beneficial and oftentimes 
profitable ; for some of them are not so dangerous but that they may in some sort 
and oftentimes in fit and due season profit and do good.” In regard to the acrid 
properties of the plants, he further says: « Cunning beggars do use to stampe the 
leaves and lay it unto their legs and armes, which causeth such filthy ulcers as we 
daily see (among such wicked vagabondes), to moove the people the more to pittie.” 
Van Swieten, Tissot, and others mention a curious practice, formerly prevail- 
ing in several countries of Europe, of applying Ranunculus to the wrists and fingers 
for the cure of intermittent fevers. This practice we noted only a few days since, 
when called to see a child of a new-settled German family in our city; the little 
one’s wrists were bound up in the leaves and branches of 2. acris; it was suffering 
with an attack of lobar pneumonia. 
In former practice the plants were used, in view of external stimulation, in 
rheumatism (especially sciatic), hip disease, hemicrania, and in local spasmodic 
and fixed pains ; in asthma, icterus, dysuria, and pneumonia. Withering, in speak- 
ing of Rk. fammuda, says: “It is an instantaneous emetic, as if Nature had furnished 
an antidote to poisons from among poisons of its own tribe; and it is to be pre- 
ferred to almost any other vomit in promoting the instantaneous expulsion of 
deleterious substances from the stomach,” a | 
Many species of this genus are used as pot-herbs, as the process of boiling 
throws off the volatile acrid principle and renders them inert, though some cases 
are reported where this happy result failed, and serious symptoms supervened. 
In Northern Persia the young tubers, leaves, stems, and blossoms of R. edulis, 
Boiss, are brought into market and sold as a pot-herb; the Swedish peasantry use 
R. ficaria, Linn,; and the shepherds of Wallachia, 2. sceleratus, Linn.* 
* Lewis Sturtevant, M.D., in Bos. Gaz., vii, 316. 
