CLOVE-PINK. 185 



Spenser and Ben Jonson generally designate the plant by the 

 name of " Sops in wine", it being customary in their time to 

 infuse the flowers in wine for the sake of the spicy flavour they 

 impart : 



" Bring hether the pincke and purple cullambine 

 With gelUflowers ; 

 Bring Coronations and Sops in wine /" 



Shepherd's Calendar, 



" Fair ox-eye, goldy-locks and columbine 



Pinks, goulands, king-cups and sweet sops in wine." 



Pan's Anniversary. 



Qualities. — The odour of the petals is pleasant and aroma- 

 tic, somewhat resembling that of the clove-spice. The taste is 

 slightly bitter and sub-astringent, and is rendered more power- 

 ful by drying. On distilling the fresh flowers with water, the 

 distilled liquor proves considerably impregnated with their fra- 

 grance, but no essential oil separates : the remaining decoction 

 is of a deep red colour, and yields, on being inspissated, a dark 

 purplish red extract, of little or no smell, and of a bitterish, 

 austere, sub-saline taste. Rectified spirit digested on the flowers, 

 receives a much paler tincture, but extracts the whole of their 

 sensible qualities. Acids redden the colour of the infusion, al- 

 kalies change it to green, and sulphate of iron renders it black. 



Medical Properties and Uses. — The clove-pink was highly 

 commended by the medical writers of former days as a cordial, 

 sudorific, and anti-poison. The flowers are recormiiended by Dr. 

 Hill *, " in all Disorders of the Head, in Palpitations of the 

 Heart, and in nervous Complaints of whatever Kind. They 

 have been also much praised in malignant and pestilential Fevers, 

 Simon Paulli tells us, with an Air of great Certainty and Assur- 

 ance, that he had cur'd great numbers of People of malignant 

 and pestilential Fevers, by no other Medicine but a strong In- 

 fusion of these Flowers in Water, which he tells us is a power- 

 ful Sudorific and Diuretic, and that it at the same Time com- 

 forts the Patient instead of weakening him." For their cordial 

 and cephalic properties they appear to have been especially es- 

 teemed t, and were much valued as a remedy of some virtue in 



• Hist. Mat. Med. p. 431. 



-j- Thus Gerard says, that when they are made into a conserve, they are 

 "exceeding cordiall, and wonderfully above measure comfort the heart." 



