WHITE LILY. 81 



Pliny ranked the Lily as second only to the Rose ; and Anacreon 

 in his odes compares Venus to this flower. 



Ouf own poets have not forgotten the praises of the Lily. Thom- 

 son's beautiful paraphrase of Matt. vi. 28, is familiar to every reader. 



" Queen of the field, in milk-white mantle drest, 

 The lovely Lily waved her curling crest." 



Gawin Douglas. 



" The Lily of all children of the spring 

 The palest, — fairest too where fair ones are." 



Barry Cornwall. 



Qualities. — The bulb is inodorous ; to the taste it is insipid 

 and sweetish, and, when masticated, rather bitter and extremely 

 mucilaginous. Placed in water, it is soon decomposed, and be- 

 comes intolerably fetid. According to Spielmann, the mucilage 

 constitutes about one- quarter the weight of the bulb. It also con- 

 tains faecula, and a bitter principle like many other plants of the 

 same family, but it has not been minutely examined. The recent 

 flowers * exhale a sweet fragrant odour, which is totally dissipated 

 by drying, and by evaporating the aqueous or spirituous menstruum, 

 in which it is enveloped. Both water and spirit are impregnated 

 with the odour, by infusion or distillation, but no essential oil 

 has been obtained. 



Medicinal Properties and Uses.— In consequence of the 

 aromatic principle which the flowers exhale in the recent state, 

 we cannot but allow that they act on the nervous system with 

 great energy, even to the causing syncope and death ;f but this 

 exciting property is lost by coction ; hence, they may with great 

 propriety enter into anodyne and emollient fomentations, lave- 

 ments, and collyria. Linnaeus says, that they have been used 

 for epilepsy ; but no reliance is now placed in their antiepileptic 

 powers. Infused in oil, they have been applied to painful and 



* The exhalations of the flowers are considered dangerous, and Murray 

 (Appar. Med. torn. v. p. 89) mentions an instance which occurred in 

 London, in 1779, of a female, whose death was attributed to the circum- 

 stance of her having these flowers at night in her bed-room, as she was 

 found dead in the morning. A number of them, in a close room at night, 

 would undoubtedly prove injurious. Ingenhousz correctly observes, that 

 these deleterious effects do not depend on the odorous principle of the 

 flowers. 



t See Murray, App. Med. torn. v. 89. 

 VOL. II. G 



