NAT. ORDER. POMACEiE. 
91 
they are planted for hedges. The best quick-set hedges are formed 
by planting them in two rows, about a foot or a foot-and-a-half apart. 
The hedges, two or three years after planting, ought to be clipped 
once or twice every year, in order to keep them in shape, and 
thicken them ; and they should be kept perfectly clear from weeds, 
at least for the first few years. 
Medical Properties and Uses. This plant was formerly consid- 
ered as possessing powerful narcotic properties, and some instances 
are recorded of its fatal effects, proving a poison. The seeds are 
considered especially remarkable in producing this effect, and the 
leaves possess similar properties. Formerly, the thorn was used as 
a medicine, and was highly spoken of as an alterative, and valued 
in the treatment of scrofula, and cutaneous eruptions. Baron Storck 
made the expressed juice of the thorn into an extract, and employed 
it in cases of mania, epilepsy, and some other convulsive affections, 
and, as he reports, with some advantage. He has, however, been 
more reserved in his trial with this, and more temperate in recom- 
mending it ; than with respect to most of the others he has practised 
with. Some other Avriters have also employed it, and recommended 
it, but they are chiefly the experiments of Greding which properly 
ascertained its powers and virtues. 
This industrious physician employed it in a great number of 
maniacal cases ; and, beginning with small doses, he proceeded to 
very large ones, but could not, in any one of the cases he employed 
it in, obtain a cure. Dr. Cullen, speaking of this plant, says : " I 
have employed this extract in a great number of epileptic cases, and 
in cases of epilepsy joined with mania, but, except in one single in- 
stance, have made no cure ; and the great number of cases in which 
it failed, lead me to judge it to be a medicine seldom suited to the 
cure of those diseases." There are, indeed, cases of both diseases, 
reported by persons of good credit, in which the extract succeeded. 
But I do not admit this as a proof of any peculiar power in the 
thorn, as many other plants produce the same effect. 
