The Sassafras. 



be found in its bark, and particularly in the bark of its roots, 

 which has now been in general use all over Europe, amongst 

 the practisers of the healing art, for upwards of two hundred 

 years. For myself, 1 must say, that I have had no experience 

 of its utility; but others have, or think they have, which, in 

 such a case, is pretty nearly as good. 



491. Bark, wood, leaf, seed, flower, all have a pretty 

 strong, and by no means a disagreeable, odour ; and one 

 never would imagine that it was mediciiie, if one did not so 

 often hear it talked of as an excellent sudorific. The Ame- 

 ricans gather the flowers in the spring, and carry them to 

 the great cities, where the overcharged specidators stand 

 in need of stomachics, and, for various weighty reasons, 

 of something to purify the blood; and, if the Sassafras 

 would but purify the morals at the same time, it ought to 

 be cultivated liberally in every mercantile and manufac- 

 turing town of the mother as well as of the daughter 

 country. The farming people, taking compassion on the 

 overgo rged citizens, and not, doubtless, from any desire to 

 drain their purses while they are purifying their blood, 

 gather the flower in the month of May, in Long 

 Island for instance, carry them down to New^ York in great 

 quantities, and there charge for them only the very mode- 

 rate price of four English pence a pint ; when any long 

 Yankee, assisted by a little bit of a ladder, would easily 

 gather twenty bushels a day ! Yet you see the " Yorkers " 

 running to the market with all possible eagerness to obtain 

 this means of restoring or preserving their health, never 

 imagining that they would stand in no need of Sassafras 

 tea, if they would but abstain a little from their breakfasts 

 of beef-steaks, and their glasses of grog from morning 

 to night. 



