SARRACENIA  PURPUREA,  A  REMEDY  FOR  SMALL-POX.  363 
plant  of  Nova  Scotia  is  the  remedy  for  small-pox,  in  all  its 
forms,  in  twelve  hours  after  the  patient  has  taken  the  medicine. 
It  is  also  as  curious  as  it  is  wonderful  that,  however  alarming 
and  numerous  the  eruptions,  or  confluent  and  frightful  they 
may  be,  the  peculiar  action  of  the  medicine  is  such  that  very 
seldom  is  a  scar  left  to  tell  the  story  of  the  disease. 
I  will  not  enter  upon  a  physiological  analysis  now  ;  it  will  be 
sufficient  for  my  present  purpose  to  state,  that  it  cures  the  dis- 
ease as  no  other  medicine  does — not  by  stimulating  functional 
re-agency,  but  by  actual  contact  with  the  virus  in  the  blood, 
rendering  it  inert  and  harmless,  and  this  I  gather  from  the  fact 
that  if  either  vaccine  or  variolous  matter  be  washed  with  the  in- 
fusion of  the  Sarracenia,  they  are  deprived  of  their  contagious 
properties.  The  medicine,  at  the  same  time,  is  so  mild  to  the 
taste  that  it  may  be  mixed  largely  with  tea  or  coffee,  as  I  have 
done,  and  given  to  connoisseurs  in  these  beverages  to  drink, 
without  their  being  aware  of  the  admixture. 
Strange,  however,  to  say,  it  is  scarcely  two  years  since  science 
and  the  medical  world  were  utterly  ignorant  of  this  great  boon  of 
Providence  ;  and  it  would  be  dishonorable  in  me  not  to  acknowl- 
edge that  had  it  not  been  for  the  discretion  of  Mr.  John  Thomas 
Lane,  of  Lanespark,  County  Tipperary,  Ireland,  late  of  Her 
Majesty's  Imperial  Customs  of  Nova  Scotia,  to  whom  the 
MecMac  Indians  had  given  the  plant,  the  world  would  not  now 
be  in  possession  of  the  secret.  No  medical  man  before  me  had 
ever  put  this  medicine  upon  trial ;  but  in  1861,  when  the  whole 
Province  of  Nova  Scotia  was  in  a  state  of  panic,  and  patients 
were  dying  in  the  hospitals  at  the  rate  of  twelve  and  a  half  per 
cent.,  from  May  to  August,  Mr.  Lane,  in  the  month  of  May, 
placed  the  "  Sarracenia  "  in  my  hands  to  decide  upon  its  merits  ; 
and  after  my  trials  then  and  since,  I  have  been  convinced  of  its 
astonishing  efficacy. 
The  Indian  Cup  is  found  in  swamps  and  moss  bogs.  Its  ca- 
pacious globular  receptacles  are  generally  filled  with  cool,  bland 
water.  The  Cups  are  lined  with  bristles,  pointing  downwards, 
that  entangle  the  flies  that  come  to  drink,  so  that  few  escape 
drowning.  It  is  a  very  curious  and  remarkable  family  of  plants, 
exclusively  North  American,  and  not  to  be  met  with  west  of  the 
Alleghanies.    The  leaves  take  the  form  of  a  long  bulbous  tube 
