EXPERIMENTS AND THEIR RESULT. 87 



nigrum, says Tournefort, * when it is necessary to subdue 

 inflammation, or soften and relax the fibres. The pounded 

 herb is applied to haemorrhoids. The juice, with a sixth- 

 part of rectified spirit-of-wine, is advantageous in cases of 

 erysipelas, ringworm, wildfire, and all diseases of the skin. 

 Nightshade is also employed in anodyne cataplasms. 



Tournefort did not confine himself to simple botanical de- 

 scriptions ; he did, what our modern botanists neglect doing, 

 he made experiments, both physiological and chemical, on 

 the plants employed in medicine. Thus, he began by tasting 

 the different parts of the plant. 



" The root," he says, " is almost insipid ; the leaves taste 

 like a saltish herb ; there is something sharp and vinegary in 

 the fruit ; the whole plant has a narcotic odour. The leaves 

 do not redden turnsole, t but the ripe fruit reddens it greatly; 

 whence we may conjecture that the sal-ammoniac contained 

 in this plant is moderated in the leaves by a very consider- 

 able portion of foetid oil and earth, but that the acid por- 

 tion of the salt is strongly developed in the ripe fruit; so 

 that we must choose our part of the plant according to the 

 purposes we wish to employ it for. The fruits, for instance, 

 are more refreshing, but more repellant, than the leaves, which 

 soften while resolving, cleansing, and absorbing." 



* Tournefort, " Histoire des Plantes" (ed. 1727), i. 74, 75. 



t Turnsole, a colouring substance made of coarse linen rags, which, 

 after being cleaned and bleached, are dipped into a mixture of ammoniacal 

 matter, and the juice of the Crozophora tinctoria. 



