268 DROPWORT. 



flowers and the recent herb have a bitterish taste and an aro- 

 matic smell. 



In autumn, if the recent tubers are scraped and well washed 

 in cold water, they afford a fragrant, dark red tincture, which, 

 left to itself, soon deposits a white, friable, amylaceous faecula. 

 Thisfsecula, or starch, is possessed of nutritive qualities*, and by 

 decoction in water, affords a jelly-like, glutinous substance. 

 The fresh flowers boiled in milk impart an agreeable flavour, 

 and a fragrant distilled water may be made from them. The 

 dried herb has been used in tanning leather. 



The dried tubers are rather bitter and astringent. The 

 aqueous infusion has the same flavour as the plant, and becomes 

 of a reddish colour, which is rendered black by sulphate of iron. 



Medical Properties and Uses. — In Dropwort, we have to 

 record the fate of another plant which has sunk into oblivion. 

 It was esteemed by the ancients as incisive, diuretic, and lithon- 

 triptic. Sennertus, as quoted by Ettmuller-j-, recommended a 

 decoction of it combined with butchers'-broom and figwort, to 

 be administered in scrofula. Simon Pauli J gave it in fluor albus, 

 Lobel in epilepsy, and J. Bauhin, on the authority of Caesalpi- 

 nus, states that the distilled water of the plant was reckoned an 

 antidote against the plague. A more probable account is given 

 by some, of its effects in dysentery, in which disease, fifteen 

 grains of the powdered root were given every four hours with 

 success. Modern practitioners have either neglected it, or 

 have omitted to record their experience of its properties. 



It was employed in the form of decoction, by boiling an ounce 

 of the dried root jj in a pint and a half of water, to aj)int; and 

 a vinous tincture was prepared with three ounces of the bruised 

 root in a quart of white wine. 



* In times of scarcity the tubers have been used for food.— Linn. Flora 

 Suecica, p. 439. Dried and reduced to powder they aiFord a substitute for 

 bread not to be despised. — Thirl. Amain. Acad. 



■f Op Med. ed. J. C. Westphali, torn, i. p. 569. 



X Bot. Quadripart, p. 332. 



§ More correctly the tubers. 



