254 FAMILY HERBAL. 



The root is used. It is of a brownish colour,, 

 rough on the surface,, and woody, but loose in its 

 texture. It is to be given in infusion. It is an 

 excellent medicine in the gravel, and in suppres- 

 sions of urine, as also in the quinzy, and in pleu- 

 risies, and peripneumonies. It works the most 

 powerfully, and the most suddenly, by urine of 

 any medicine : and is so excellent in forcing away 

 gravel and small stones, that some have pretended 

 it a remedy for the stone, and said it would dissolve 

 and break it. This is going too far ; no medicine 

 lias been found that has that effect, nor can it be 

 supposed that any can. Great good has been 

 done by those medicines which the parliament pur- 

 chased of Mrs. Stephens, more than perhaps, by any 

 other whatsoever, in this terrible complaint ; but they 

 never dissolved a large and hard stone. Indeed there 

 needs no more to be assured of this, than to examine. 

 one of those stones ; it will not he supposed, any 

 thing that the bladder can bear, will be able to dissolve 

 so firm and solid a substance. 



Parsly. Petroselinum. 



A very common plant in our gardens, useful m 

 the kitchen, and in medicine. It grows to two feet 

 in height. The leaves are composed of many small 

 parts : they are divided into three, and then into a 

 multitude of sub-divisions : they are of a bright 

 green, and indented. The stalks are round, angu- 

 lated, or deeply striated, slender, upright, and 

 branched. The flowers are small and white ; and 

 they stand in large tufts at the tops of the branches. 

 The seeds are roundish and striated. The root is 

 long and white. 



The roots are the part used in medicine- A 



