N,; ORD:—-URTICACE 153 
Tribe.—URTICEA. 
GENUS.—URTICA,* TOURN. 
SEX, SYST.—MONCECIA TETRANDRIA. 
URTICA URENS. 
STINGING NETTLE. 
SYN.—URTICA URENS, LINN.; U. DIOICA, HUDS. (NOT LINN.). 
GOM. NAMES,—STINGING NETTLE, DWARF NETTLE, ; (FR.) L’ORTIE; (GER.) 
BRENN-NESSEL. 
A TINCTURE OF THE WHOLE PLANT URTICA URENS, LINN. 
Description.—This stinging annual, grows to a height of from 1 to 2 feet. 
Stem erect, 4-angled and branching; édaré tough and fibrous; s#mgs sparse but 
very virulent. Leaves opposite, elliptical or ovate, petiolate, 5-nerved, and fur- 
nished with a few scattered stings; margzm deeply serrate, with long, spreading, 
and more or less blunt teeth; dase truncate or sometimes slightly cordate; stipules, 
distinct, lanceolate, reflexed. /nxflorescence in loose, axillary, drooping, racemose 
spikes, 2 in each axil; flowers androgynous. Sterile flowers: sepals 4; stamens 4, 
inserted around the rudimentary pistil; 4/amen¢s transversely wrinkled and inflexed 
in the bud, spreading elastically when the flower opens. Fertile flowers: sepals 4, 
in pairs; the two outer small and spreading, the two inner concave, in fruit mem- 
branaceous and enclosing the akenium; ségma sessile, capitate, and penicillate ; 
ovary 1-celled; ovule erect, orthotropous. /7uz¢ a straight, erect, ovate, flattened, 
shining akene; emdryo straight, axial; a/bumen present. 
History and Habitat.— This European immigrant has established itself in 
many places eastward and southward near the coast, in damp, waste grounds, 
where it flowers in July and August. 
The most ancient use of the Nettle is flagellation or urtication, a practice of 
whipping paralyzed limbs, to bring the muscles into action. This practice extended 
also to a stimulation of impotent organs, and to bring into action dormant energies. 
It was also resorted to in apoplexy, general cerebral and portal congestion, to 
bring the blood to the surface and thus relieve the more vital organs; in exanthe- 
matous fevers, to bring out the eruption; and for various affections where a power- 
ful rubefacient was considered necessary. 
The Nettle was afterward found to be styptic and anti-hemorrhagic, both topi- 
cally and internally, and proved itself very beneficial in menorrhagic, epistaxic, 
and post-partum hemorrhage, hematemesis, and hematuria. Their decoction was 
found to be diuretic, and thus beneficial, in urinary calculus, scurvy, dropsy, gout, 
jaundice, etc. ne 
* Latin, wo, to burn, 
