DAUCUS CAROTA. ORD. VI. Umbellate : 13} 
composed of several radii, and form a flat surface at the top while 
in flower, but when the,sceds ripen, become concave, and drawn 
together: the partial umbels are similar to those of the general: 
the general involucrum consists of several leaves, which are cut into 
Jong narrow segments: the partial involucrum is more simple, con- 
sisting of strap-shaped leafits: the corolla is composed of five petals, 
of which the outermost is the largest; they are all white, heart- 
shaped, and bent inwards: the five filaments are capillary, and 
furnished with simple anthera : the germen is small, and supports — 
two reflexed styles, terminated by blunt stigmata: the seeds are 
two, egg-shaped, convex, rough on one side, covered with strong 
hairs, and flat on the other. It grows wild in meadows and pastures, 
and flowers from June till August. 
This plant, in its cultivated state, is the Del kare garden 
Carrot, the roots of which are commonly served up at our tables. 
They appear by experiments to contain a large proportion of 
saccharine matter,* and consequently afford much nourishment: 
however they are found to be very difficult of digestion in the 
stomach, for if eaten raw, or imperfectly boiled, they usually pass — 
through the body without suffering any material change.’ It is on 
this account, probably, that raw carrots have been given to children 
as a vermifuge. The expressed juce, or a decoction of these roots, 
has been recommended in calculous complaints, and as a gargle 
for infants in apthous affections, or excoriations of the mouth ;° 
and a poultice of scraped carrot has been found an useful applica- 
tion to phagedenic ulcers, and to cancerous and putrid sores.° 
* VY. Marcgr, Mem. del’ Acad. des Sc. de Berlin. 1747. p. 89, See also Hann. 
Magaz. 1773. n. 75. 
« ¢¢ On which account I have employed them as a means of ascertaining the 
“¢ time which food takes to pass through the traét of the alimentary canal.”— 
Withering, 1. c. * & VY. Rosenstein in Bosch. 
¢ This use of the Carrot poultice was first discovered by Sulzer, (see Journal 
de Medicine, t. 24. p. 68.) since which its good effects are related by Gibson (in 
Med. Obs. & Inquir. vol. 4.) and others who have very generally found it to 
mitigate the pain and abate the stench of foul cancerous ulcers, 
