WATER-CRESS. 387 



wholesome salad, in which character it is cultivated to some extent in the 

 streams tributary to the Thames, and it forms an important article of rustic 

 commerce. Large quantities are brought daily throughout the season to 

 the London market. A running stream of clear water is essential to its 

 successful cultivation. " The plants are inserted in the bed of the stream 

 in rows in the direction of the current ; and all that is necessary is, to take 

 up and replant occasionally, and to keep the plants free of mud and weeds, 

 or any accumulation of extraneous matter. They will not grow so freely 

 in a muddy bottom as among sand and gravel, neither will their flavour be 

 so good as when cultivated in natural streams. The spring or autumn is 

 the best time for transplanting Water-cress." It is sometimes also culti- 

 vated in gardens where it can be frequently irrigated, but when thus raised, 

 it is far inferior to that which grows in clear rivulets. 



Qualities.- — The foliage of Water -cress has a pungent taste, with a 

 very slight bitterness, and when bruised its exhalations are volatile and 

 acrimonious, affecting the eyes and nose, like bruised mustard-seed, but in 

 a milder degree. This volatile principle rises in great part in distilla- 

 tion both with water and rectified spirit ; but is dissipated by inspis- 

 sating the infusion, or tincture, or the expressed juice, and scarcely exists 

 in the dried plant. By distilling large quantities of the leaves with water, 

 a small quantity of extremely pungent, bitter, volatile oil is obtained. It 

 is also said to afford traces of sulphur and ammonia, like many other Cruel- 

 ferce, but we have no exact analysis. 



Medicinal Properties and Uses. — As an article of diet, 

 Water-Cress is very suitable for persons of a lymphatic tem- 

 perament, where the skin is colourless, and the flesh moist and 

 flaccid, and particularly for those subject to scorbutus or exposed 

 to debilitating causes. In a more strictly medicinal light, it has 

 been esteemed, in addition to its antiscorbutic virtues and its 

 stimulating effects upon the digestive organs, as sialogogue, 

 diuretic, and diaphoretic, and has been highly recommended in 

 tertian fevers * where there is a scorbutic diathesis, in obstruc- 

 tions of the viscera -j", chronic catarrhs J, calculus of the 

 kidneys, and embarrassments of the bladder §. Galen, accord- 

 ing to Spielmann, recommended it in calculus. Others extol its 

 effects in dropsy, melancholy, hypochondria, and hysteric af- 

 fections ; in restoring suppressed catamenia ; in the resolution 

 of abdominal enlargements supervening to intermittent fever, 

 and in the cure of empyema. We can, however, scarcely credit 



* Eugalen de Scorb. obs. 54.— Werlhof de Febr. p. 80. 



f Haller Hist. st. Helv. n. 482. 



| Z winger Diss, de plantis nasturc. p. 49. 



§ Zwinger, I. c. 



D d 2 



