3 4 5 SUPPOSED MEDICAL PROPERTIES 



describe it, under the name of bellis; he attributes to it the 

 properties of the St John's wort.* And it is noteworthy that 

 the daisy belongs to the same family as the latter ; a circum- 

 stance certainly not known in the days of Pliny. 



The botanists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries 

 are by no means niggards in the eulogiums which they lavish 

 on the medicinal properties of our graceful Synantheracea. 

 Bock (better known, perhaps, under the name of Tragus, a 

 Goat), who mistook the yellow anthers for the seeds, recom- 

 mended the leaves of the Gdnzeblume (goose-flower, as he 

 called it) as a laxative. Tabernaemontanus prescribed them 

 as a remedy for cramps in the stomach and the spitting of 

 blood. 



Ray, who expresses his astonishment that the Greeks had 

 not spoken of it, looked upon the daisy as an excellent 

 vulnerary. " Externally," says he, " we employ it with suc- 

 cess in the form either of a poultice or a fomentation; for 

 internal treatment, we mix its juice with vulnerary potions." 

 These properties procured it the name of Consolida minor, 

 which would make it the pendant of the larger Consolida, 

 Symphytum officinale, a species of the Boraginaceae, very com- 

 mon in damp and shady localities. 



Ruel recommended cataplasms of daisies and cowslips for 

 gout and scrofulous tumours. Chomel affirmed that he 

 knew by experience that the flowers of the daisy and the 

 herb robert t (Geranium Robertianum), if dried in a hot 



* Pliny, " Historia Naturalis," xxvi. 5. 

 t See " The Circle of the Year." 



