198 OUR ROCK-GARDEN 



great service to him in his medical practice. " The 

 iuyce of Thorne-apples," he writes, "boiled with 

 hog's grease to the form of an vnguent or salue 

 cureth all inflammations whatsoeuer, all manner of 

 burnings or scaldings, as well of fire, water, boyling 

 leade, gunpouder, as that which comes by lightning, 

 and that in a very short time, as my self have found 

 by my dayly practice to my great credit and profit." 

 The properties of the thorn-apple are almost too 

 powerful and uncertain for safe application, at all 

 events in lay hands, though it has been employed in 

 epilepsy, mania, and divers others of the ills of 

 suffering humanity, and it occupies a place in our 

 modern pharmacopoeia. 



In South America also the Indians use the plant 

 in cases of illness, but in a somewhat different way 

 to ourselves, as it is not the sick person who there 

 takes it, but his nearest relation. As soon as this 

 person returns to his senses, a matter of some days, 

 a somewhat anxious time begins, as he is supposed 

 during the interval to have discovered the person 

 who has bewitched the invalid, and the whole family 

 immediately endeavours to discover who it is that 

 best answers to the description given. The un- 

 fortunate man who is pitched upon is then required 

 to promptly remove the spell, or, failing this, to pay 

 the penalty by his life. 



It may be objected that a plant so potent should 

 find no place in one's garden, but therein we think 



