96 FLORA HOMCOPATHICA. 
kinds of hemorrhages, and was used extensively as an external 
application for this purpose by the common people, particularly 
in epistaxis. Linneus mentions this in his account of it in the 
Flor. Sued., p. 460 ; and that there is a general belief in Sweden, 
and also in Germany, that it promotes blindness. There can 
be no doubt that the fine powdery, spun-like contents may 
cause inflammation when introduced into the eye, and a fatal 
contraction when inhaled into the lungs. (Vide Loséke, Mat. 
Med., 6th edit., p. 419.) It was not, therefore, attempted to 
administer it as an internal remedy. ‘The Bovista does not 
enter into the allopathic Pharmacopeia; but Linneus (Mat. 
Med., 5th edit., 1787, p. 280) writes of a vis adstringens, obsti- 
pans, absorbens, incrassans, ophthalmica, gastrica. 
The styptic properties of the Bovista, however, do not rest 
only on its mechanical action, but in reality on the physiological 
effects on the human organism, as indicated by the homeopathic 
provings of this fungus on persons in health. By reference to 
Noack and Trinks’s Handbuch fiir Hom. Arzneimittellehre, art. 
Bovista, it will be seen that it produces the very symptom it 
has been given to cure, as a popular remedy, viz., bleeding 
from the nose. 
Descrierion.—It may be generally known by its globose 
structure, smoothish surface, and light colour, the whole forming 
a simple covering to the white cottony substance within, which 
substance, in an advanced age, becomes a mass of firmly- 
entangled fibres of a dark colour, holding an immense quantity 
of extremely fine sable powder—we presume the seeds. 
The covering, too, becomes dark, more or less of a brownish 
slate-colour, of a silky lustre, and stiff satiny texture. Small 
plants of this slate-colour have been called Lycoperdon ardosia- 
ceum. It has been confounded with the Lycoperdon proteus, 
but is less common, and has the same number of skins, but the 
outer one is never so rough, which will help to distinguish it, 
as well as its being destitute of the cellular part at the base 
(Sowerb. Fungi). 
