lit FAMILY HERBAL. 



the plant, a very pleasant and excellent medicine in 

 the gravel ; it works powerfully by urine, and gives 

 ease in those colicy pains which frequently attend 

 upon the disorder. 



Sharp-pointed Dock. Lapathum folio acuta, 



A COMMON plant, like the ordinary dock, hut 

 somewhat handsomer, and distinguished by the 

 figure of its leaves, which are sharp-pointed, not 

 obtuse as in that, and are also somewhat narrower 

 and longer. The plant grows three foot high. 

 The stalks are erect, green, round, striated and 

 branched. The leaves are of a fine green, smooth, 

 neither crumpled on the surface, nor curled at the 

 edges, and have large ribs. The flowers are small, 

 at first greenish, then paler, and lastly, they dry and 

 become brown. The root is long, thick, and of a 

 tawny colour. 



The root is the part used, It is excellent a<* 

 gainst the scurvy, and is one of the best things we 

 know, for what is called sweetening the blood. It 

 is best given in diet drinks and decoctions. Used 

 outwardly, it cures the itch, and other foulness of 

 the skin ; it should be beat up with lard for this 

 purpose. 



Great Water Dock. Hydrolapathum maximum, 



THIS is the largest of all the dock kind? ; they 

 have a general resemblance of one another, but this 

 is most of all like to th last described, in its man- 

 ner of growth, though vastly larger. It is fre- 

 quent about waters, and is five or six feet high,. 

 The stalks are round, striated, thick and very up- 

 right, branched a little and hollow. The leaves 

 Me vastly Iwge ; of a pale green colour, smooth,, 



