802 



be, says Miss Hunter, * a most favourite food of a sort of beetle,' 

 which permits very few specimens to attain maturity without great 

 mutilation." 



" On the Medical Properties of our Geraniums. By Dr. Johnston. 

 — A few weeks ago my friend Dr. Edgar brought a plant to me to 

 have it named. It was a dried fragment of Geranium pratense. The 

 Doctor told me that a person resident in or about Ford had acquii'ed 

 great local fame, for the cure of fluxes in general, and the only remedy 

 used was an infusion of this Geranium. One dozen stalks are 

 * masked' in a pint of boiling water, and of this two ounces are taken 

 three times a-day. Dr. Edgar's interest had been raised by the cure 

 of a patient of his own, who had been greatly reduced by a chronic 

 diarrhoea that had resisted the ordinary medicinal treatment, but 

 yielded speedily to the geranium infusion. He felt relief from the 

 second dose, and continuing to take it for three or four days, he was 

 permanently cured. It was said to be a good medicine in the 

 diarrhcea of teething children, and is easily taken by them, for the 

 taste is ' like tea without sugar, rather sweeter.' 



" It is very likely that this remedy is inferior, for general use, to 

 more powerful vegetable and mineral astringents of modern introduc- 

 tion into practice, but I think it worth while to bring the subject be- 

 fore the Club, since it relates to a matter of local interest ; and there 

 are cases in which it is well for a medical man to have a wide range 

 of medicines to ring the changes upon. No Geranium has now a 

 place in any British Pharmacopa3ia,* but several species hold a con- 

 spicuous place in the old Herbals. Of Geranium pratense and its 

 immediate allies, Gerarde says, 'none of these plants are now in vse 

 in physicke ; yet Fuschius sayeth that cranes-bill with the blew floure 

 (G. pratense) is an excellent thing to heale wounds.' Our author 

 speaks in very different terms of our commoner species, Ger. molle and 

 dissectura. ' The herbe and roots dried,' says he, ' beaten into most 

 fine powder, and given halfe a spoonful fasting, and the like quanti- 

 tie to bedwards in red wine, or old claret, for the space of one and 

 twentie days together, cureth miraculously ruptures or burstings, as 

 myselfe have often proved, whereby I haue gotten crownes and credit : 

 if the ruptures be in aged persons, it shall be needful to adde thereto 

 the powder of red snailes (those without shels) dried in an ouen, in 

 number nine, which fortifie the herbs in such sort, that it neuer faileth, 



* Several Geiania are introduced into Dr. Stoakes' ' Botanical Materia Medica,' 

 but witliuut any indication of their properties. 



