490 OCTANDRIA. MONOGYNIA. Daphne. 
D. laure^ola. (Clusters axillary, simple, each of about five flowers, 
drooping, shorter than the smooth, obovate-lanceolate, ever¬ 
green leaves: calyx obtuse. Sm. E.) 
(Hook. FI. Lond. E.)— Jacq. Austr. 183— E. Bot. 119— Wale. — Blackw. 62 
— Lob. Obs. 200. 1— Ger. 1404. 1— Park. 205. 1— Ger. 1219. 1— Hod. 
365—Lob. Obs. 200. 2, S$c.—J. B. i. 564. 
(Stem erect, two or three feet high, cylindrical, but little branched, naked 
below, bearing at the summit of each branch a tuft of spreading, bright 
green, shining, smooth leaves. Flowers yellowish green, each accom¬ 
panied by a bractea , drooping. Perianth infundibuliform, the limb four- 
cleft. Siam, in two rows. Berry ovate, black. Grev. E.) 
Spurge Laurel, Laurel Mezereon. (Wood Laurel. Welsh: Clust 
yr Ewig. E.) Woods and hedges. Common in Yorkshire. Need wood 
Forest; sometimes with variegated leaves. Mr. Pitt. (About Hil- 
Such an empurpled and perfumed branch had the power to excite the elegant muse of the 
author of Psyche, to an almost expiring effort. 
“ Odours of spring, my sense ye charm 
With fragrance premature; 
And, mid these days of dark alarm, 
Almost to hope allure. 
Methinks with purpose soft ye come 
To tell of brighter hours, 
Of May’s blue skies, abundant bloom. 
Her sunny gales and showers.” 
It is extremely difficult at this period to determine what plants may strictly be 
deemed aboriginal to Britain. The claim of Mezereon would appear to rest on slight 
authority, especially when we consider that it entirely escaped the researches of Turner, in 
1568, and subsequently of Gerard, and the indefatigable Ray. E.) The branches afford a 
yellow dye. An ointment prepared from the bark or the berries has been successfully 
applied to ill-conditioned ulcers. The whole plant is very corrosive ; six of the berries 
killed a wolf. A woman gave twelve grains of the berries to her daughter, who had a 
quartan ague ; she vomited blood, and died immediately. Linn. A decoction made of two 
drams of the cortical part of the root, boiled in three pints of water till one pint be wasted : 
and this quantity, drank daily, is found very efficacious in resolving syphilitic nodes, and 
other indurations of the periosteum. See Dr. Russell in Med. Obs. iii. p. 189. (And 
hence the efficacy of the Lisbon Diet Drink, according to the testimony of Dr. Donald 
Monro. E.)—The considerable and long-continued heat and irritation that it produces in 
the throat, when chewed, made me first think of giving it in a case of difficulty in swallow¬ 
ing, occasioned by a paralytic affection. The patient was directed to chew a thin slice of 
the root as often as she could bear to do it; and in about two months she recovered her 
power of swallowing. This woman bore the disagreeable irritation, and the ulceration its 
acrimony occasioned, with great resolution ; but she had been reduced to skin and bone, 
and for three years before had suffered extremely from hunger, without being able to satisfy 
her appetite: for she swallowed liquids very imperfectly, and solids not at all. The 
disease came on after lying in .—(Daphne Mezereum , Veratrwm album , and Menispermum 
cocculus , are used by fraudulent brewers to communicate an intoxicating quality and strong 
taste to weak beer; a practice worthy of execration ; and here, and in many other coun¬ 
tries, forbidden under severe penalties. Month. Mag. Dr. Swediaur informs us that the 
antidote to this potent poison is camphor. Dr. Home declares Mezereon to be a more 
powerful deobstruent than even mercury, highly successful in syphilitic and other tumours, 
but not so in scrofula. In France and the Peninsula the bark is applied to the skin to 
promote a discharge as a perpetual blister; and is also occasionally serviceable when 
masticated, as a remedy for tooth-ach. The red berries prove attractive to singing birds, 
especially to the several species of Finch, ( Loxia ). 
