“ A girl aged five years, ate a considerable quantity of the kernels of sweet cherries (prunus avium) . 
Her brother (a few years older than herself) also ate some. After the lapse of a few hours symptoms of 
poisoning appeared. When a medical man was called the next day, he found the girl in such a stupor that 
she could not be roused. The eyes were closed, pupils considerably dilated, the skin moist and hot, respira- 
tion exceedingly hurried, pulse small and quick, &c., the child very restless. An effervescing mixture was 
ordered internally, and cold fomentations to the head externally ; after a few hours vomiting of a greenish 
mass ensued, and was followed by retching, which continued until death ; the body was spasmodically drawn 
backwards. The illness lasted forty hours. On a ‘post-mortem, examination the stomach was found intensely 
reddened ; the intestines were strictured and invaginated, but there was not any inflammation. The liver, 
spleen, and large vessels contained black tar-like blood. The boy, who had eaten fewer cherry-kernels, 
became likewise ill, but recovered in the course of a month. An eruption, analogous to uticaria, came out 
on the fore-arms of both children,; they were both perfectly well (according to the statement of the 
mother) before eating the cherry-kernels, and no other cause for the attack could be assigned. The kernel 
of the prunus avium (cerasus nigra) contains amygdaline, and produces prussic acid as well as essential oil 
in the stomach.’* 
In ( Cerasus or Cerasophora) the true cherry, the inflorescence is in tufts or sertula, not in racemes. 
In ( Laurocerasus ) the cherry-laurel the flowers and fruit are in racemes, and the leaves are evergreen. 
While in Padus, a group sometimes separated from Lauro-cerasus, and sometimes combined with it, although 
the inflorescence is racemose, the leaves are deciduous. These subgeneric distinctions are at least as im- 
portant, if not more so, in an economical as in a systematic point of view, for prussic acid, which abounds in 
the Lauro-cerasi even in their leaves, is almost absent from the true cherries, and in the intermediate Padi, 
it occurs only in very moderate proportions. 
Qualities. — Three sorts of this fruit are ranked among the articles of the materia medica ; they are 
all met with in our gardens, but the shops are supplied with them moderately dried from abroad. These 
are the Brignole plum, or Prunelle, brought from Brignole in Provence, of a reddish yellow colour and a 
very grateful sweet subacid taste ; the common or French prunes, called by our gardeners the little black 
damask plum and damsons, the larger damask violet plum of Tours, which is seldom kept in the shops, its 
place having generally been supplied by the common prunes. All these fruits possess the same general 
qualities with the other summer fruits. When perfectly ripe they are pleasant to the palate, and moderately 
nutritive ; but when eaten too freely they are apt to occasion flatulence, griping, and diarrhoea. They are 
nearly inodorous, and contain chiefly mucus, saccharine matter, and malic acid. 
Medical Properties and Uses. — The dried fruit, or prunes, are gently laxative, and enter as an 
ingredient into the Confectio sennee of our pharmacopoeias. They are advantageously employed as an article 
of diet in costive habits, and in febrile and other diseases. * 
The fruit of the sloe (Prunus spinosa ) is a powerful astringent, and the inspissated juice is a substitute 
for the Indian catechu. This juice is also largely used in factitious or adulterated port-wine, and the leaves 
are reckoned among the adulterations of tea in England. 
A writer who signs himself “ Crito,” in the Truth Teller, No. 1 5, introduces us to an honest enthusiast, 
discoursing to his hearers on the flowers of the season and other offerings from Flora to the rolling year. 
“ Picture to your imagination a poor £ dirty* mendicant of the order of St. Francis, who had long prayed i 
and fasted in his sanctuary and long laboured in his garden, issuing out on the morning of his first pilgrim- 
age without money and without provisions, clad in his mantle and hood £ like a sad votarist in palmer’s 
weeds and thus and in these words taking leave of the poor flock who lived round his gothic habitation : — 
‘ Fellow men I owe you nothing, and I give you all ; you neither paid me tithe nor rent, yet I have bestowed jr 
on you food and clothing in poverty, medicine in sickness, and spiritual counsel in adversity. That I might 
do all these things I have devoted my life in the seclusion of those venerable walls. There I have consulted 
the sacred books of our church for your spiritual instruction and the good of your souls ; to clothe you I 
have sold the embroidered garment, and have put on the habit of mendicity. In the intercalary moments 
of my canonical hours of prayer, I have collected together the treasures of Flora, and gathered from her 
plants the useful arts of physic,by which you have been benefited. Ever mindful of the useful object of the 
labour to which I had condemned myself, I have brought together into the garden of this priory, the lily of 
the valley and the gentian of the mountain, the nymphaea of the lake, and the diver of the arid bank ; in 
short I have collected the throatwort, the liverwort, and every other vegetable specific which the kind hand 
of nature has spread over the globe, and which I have designated by their qualities, and have converted to 
your use and benefit. Mindful also of the pious festivals which our church prescribes, I have sought to 
make these charming objects of floral nature, the timepieces of my religious calendar, and the mementos of 
the hastening period of my mortality. Thus I can light the taper of our Virgin Mother on the blowing of 
the white snowdrop, which opens its floweret at the time of Candlemas ; the lady’s smock and the daffodil 
remind me of the Annunciation ; the blue harebell of the festival of St. George ; the ranunculus, of the In- 
vention of the Cross ; the scarlet lychnis, of St. John the Baptist’s day ; the white lily, of the Visitation of 
our Lady ; and the virgin’s bower, of her Assumption ; and Michaelmas, Martinmas, Holy Rood, and ! 
Christmas, have all their appropriate monitors. I learn the time of day from the shutting of the blossoms 
of the star of Jerusalem and the dandelion, and the hour of the night by the stars.”* 
