USES OF BORAGE 131 



The leaves are still sometimes put into beverages, 

 claret-cup and the like. A little lemon, sugar, wine, 

 water, and a borage leaf or two swimming on the 

 surface are the constituents of the old-fashioned 

 drink known as " cool tankard." The leaves, too, 

 have been boiled and eaten as a vegetable, so that 

 the plant was cultivated not only for its medical but 

 its domestic use. Even the domestic side in these 

 old recipes of herb-teas, cooling drinks, and the like, 

 is rarely entirely divorced from the medicinal, for 

 while Buttes, in his " Table Talke," 1599, strikes 

 a somewhat convivial note in his assertion that 

 4 'borage laid in wine strengtheneth and cleareth 

 the heart, putting merry conceits into the minde," 

 the general tone is rather that exemplified by Venner 

 in his " Via Recta, "published in 1650, where he says 

 that " it appeareth that the custome of macerating 

 the fresh leaves of Borage in wine is very good, and 

 chiefly to be frequented of students, and suche as 

 are subject to melancholy." He declares too that 

 "the leaves boyled and eaten in manner of a 

 Spinach tart, are very wholesome, for they engender 

 good humour." 1 It is rather sad to reflect that all 

 this mass of testimony rests on no solid substratum 



1 This good humour bears a different meaning in these old 

 writers to that we now associate with the words. The old 

 physicians ascribed much of health or disease to what they 

 termed humours, conditions, good or evil, in the economy 

 of the body. 



