The Toadflax, or Flaxweed (_Linaria vulgaris_) belongs to the
scrofula-curing order of plants, getting its name from _linum_, flax,
and being termed "toad" by a [566] mistaken translation of its Latin
title _Bubonio_, this having been wrongly read _bufonio_,--
belonging to a toad,--or because having a flower (as the
Snapdragon) like a toad's mouth: whereas "bubonio" means "useful
for the groins."
It is an upright herbaceous plant most common in hedges, having
leaves like grass of a dull sea green aspect, and bearing dense
clusters of yellow flowers shaped like those of the garden
Snapdragon, with spurs at their base. It continues in flower until the
late autumn. The Russians cultivate the Snapdragon for the oil
yielded by its seeds.
The Toadflax has a faint disagreeable smell, and a bitter saline taste.
It acts medicinally as a powerful purge, and promoter of urine, and
therefore it is employed for carrying off the water of dropsies, being
in this respect a well known rural Simple. Waller says: "Country
people boil the whole plant in ale, and drink the decoction; but the
expressed juice of the fresh plant acts still more powerfully."
In many districts the herb is familiarly known as "butter and eggs;"
and in Germany though dedicated to the Virgin it is called "devil's
band."
Again in Devonshire it goes by the names of "Rambling," or
"Wandering Sailor," "Pedler's Basket," "Mother of Millions" (the
ivy-leaved sort), "Lion's Mouth" and "Flaxweed."
When used externally an infusion of the herb acts as an anodyne to
subdue irritation of the skin, and it may be taken as a medicine to
modify skin diseases. The fresh juice is attractive to flies, but at
the same time it serves to poison them: so if it be mixed with milk,
and placed where flies resort they will drink it and perish at the
first sip.
[567] As promoting a free flow of urine, the herb has been named
"Urinalis," or sometimes "Ramsted." The flowers contain a yellow
colouring matter, mucilage, and sugar. In Germany they are given
with the rest of the plant for dropsy, jaundice, piles, and some
diseases of the skin. Gerard says: "The decoction openeth the
stoppings of the liver, and spleen: and is singular good against the
jaundice which is of long continuance." He advises an ointment
made from the plant stampt with lard for certain skin eruptions, and
a decoction made with four drachms of the herb in eight ounces of
boiling water. The bruised leaves are useful externally for curing
blotches on the face, and for piles.
An old distich says of the Toadflax as compared with the
Larkspur:--
"Esula lactescit: sine lacte Linaria crescit;"
or,
"Larkspur with milk doth flow:
Toadflax without milk doth grow,"
(alluding to the dry nature of the toadflax). To which the Hereditary
Marshal of Hesse added the following line:--
"Esoula nil nobis, sed dat linaria _taurum_,"
implying that the herb was of old valued for its good effects when
applied externally to piles as an ointment, a fomentation, or a
poultice, each being made from the leaves and the flowers. The
originator of this ointment was a Dr. Wolph, physician to the
Landgrave of Hesse, who only divulged its formula on the prince
promising to give him _a fat ox_ annually for the discovery.
TOMATO (or LOVE APPLE).
Though only of recent introduction as a common vegetable in this
country, and though grown chiefly [568] under glass for the table in
England, yet the Tomato is so abundantly imported, and so
extensively used by all classes now-a-days throughout the British
Isles that it may fairly take consideration for whatever claims it can
advance as a curative Simple. Imported early in the present century
from South America it remained for a while an exclusive luxury
produced for the rich like pine apples and melons. But gradually
since then the Tomato has steadily acquired an increasing
popularity, and now large crops of the profitable fruit are brought
from Bordeaux and the Channel Islands, to meet the demands of our
English markets. Much of the favour which has become attached to
this ruddy, polished, attractive-looking fruit is due to a widespread
impression that it is good for the liver, and a preventive of
biliousness. Nevertheless, rumours have also gone abroad that
habitual Tomato-eaters are especially liable to cancerous disease in
this, or that organ.
Belonging to the Solanums the Tomato (_Lycopersicum_) is a plant
of Mexican origin. Its brilliant fruit was first known as _Mala
oethiopica_, or the Apples of the Moors, and bearing the Italian
designation _Pomi dei Mori_. This name was presently corrupted in
the French to _Pommes d'amour_; and thence in English to the
epithet Love Apples, a perversion which shows by what curious
methods primary names may become incongruously changed. They
are also called Gold Apples from their bright yellow colour before
getting ripe. The term _Lycopersicum_ signifies a "wolf's peach,"
because some parts of the plant are thought to excite animal
passions.
The best fruit is supposed to grow within sight, or smell of the sea.
It needs plenty of sunlight and heat. The quicker it is produced the
fewer will be the seeds discoverable in its pulp.
[568] Green when young, Tomatoes acquire a bright yellow hue
before reaching maturity, and when ripe they are smooth, shining,
furrowed, and of a handsome red.
Chemically this Love Apple contains citric and malic acids: and it
further possesses oxalic acid, or oxalate of potash, in common with
the Sorrel of our fields, and the Rhubarb of our kitchen gardens. On
which account each of this vegetable triad is ill suited for gouty
constitutions disposed to the formation of irritating oxalate of lime
in the blood. With such persons a single indulgence in Tomatoes,
particularly when eaten raw, may provoke a sharp attack of gout.
Otherwise there are special reasons for supposing the Tomato to be
a wholesome fruit of remarkable purifying value.
Dr. King Chambers classifies it among remedies against scurvy,
telling us that Tomatoes mixed with brown bread make a capital
sauce for costive persons. And the fruit owns a singular property in
connection with diseases of plants, suggesting its probable worth as
protective against bacterial germs, and microbes of disease in our
bodies when it is taken as food, or medicinally. If a Tomato shrub
be uprooted at the end of the summer, and allowed to wither on the
bough of a fruit tree, or if it be burnt beneath the fruit tree, it
will not only kill any blight which may be present, but will also
preserve the tree against any future invasion by blight. The hostility
thus evinced by the plant to low organisms is due to the presence of
sulphur, which the Tomato shrub largely contains, and which is
rendered up in an active state by decay, or by burning. Now
remembering that digestion likewise splits up the Tomato into its
chemical constituents, and releases its sulphur within us, we may
fairly assume that persons [570] who eat Tomatoes habitually are
likely to have a particular immunity from bacterial and putrefactive
diseases.
Wherefore it is altogether improbable that Tomatoes will engender
cancer, which is essentially a disease of vitiated blood, and of
degenerate cell tissue. Possibly the old exploded doctrine of
signatures may have suggested, or started this accusation against the
maligned, though unguarded Tomato: for it cannot be denied the
guileless fruit bears a nodulated tumour-like appearance, whilst
showing, when cut, an aspect of red raw morbid fleshy structure
strangely resembling cancerous disease.
Vegetarians who eat Tomatoes constantly and freely claim that
cancer is a disease almost unknown among their ranks; but an
Italian doctor writing from Rome gives it as the experience of
himself and his medical brethren that cancer is as common in Italy
and Sicily among vegetarians as with mixed eaters. Most of our
American cousins, who are the enterprising fathers of this medicinal
fruit, persuade themselves that they are never in perfect health
except during the Tomato season. And with us the ruddy Solanum
has obtained a wide popularity not simply at table as a tasty cooling
sallet, or an appetising stew, but essentially as a supposed
antibilious purifier of the blood. When uncooked it contains a
notable quantity of Solanin, and it would be dangerous to let
animals drink water in which the plant had been boiled. The Staff of
the Cancer Hospital at Brompton have emphatically declared "they
see no ground whatever for supposing that the eating of Tomatoes
predisposes to cancer."
Nevertheless some country people in the remote American States
attribute cancer to an excessively free use of the wild uncultivated
tomato as food.
[571] The first mention of this fruit by the London Horticultural
Society occurred in 1818.
Chemically in addition to the acids already named the Tomato
contains a volatile oil, a brown resinous extractive matter very
fragrant, a vegeto-mineral matter, muco-saccharin, some salts, and
in all probability an alkaloid. The whole plant smells unpleasantly,
and its juices when subjected to heat by the action of fire emit a
vapour so powerful as to provoke vertigo and vomiting.
The specific principles furnished by the Tomato will, when
concentrated, produce, if taken medicinally, effects very similar
to those brought about by taking mercurial salts, viz., an
ulcerative-state of the mouth, with a profuse flow of saliva, and
with excessive stimulation of the liver: peevishness also on the
following day, with a depressing backache in men, suggesting
paralysis, and with a profuse fluor albus in women. When given
in moderation as food, or as physic, the fruit will remedy
this chain of symptoms.
By reason of its efficacy in promoting an increased flow of bile if
judiciously taken, the Tomato bears the name in America of
Vegetable Mercury, and it has almost superseded calomel there as a
biliary medicinal provocative. Dr. Bennett declares the Tomato to
be the most useful and the least harmful of all known medicines for
correcting derangements of the liver. He prepares a chemical extract
of the fruit and plant which will, he feels assured, depose calomel
for the future.
Across the Atlantic an officinal tincture is made from the Tomato
for curative purposes by treating the apples, and the bruised fresh
plant with alcohol, and letting this stand for eight days before it
is filtered and strained.
A teaspoonful of the tincture is a sufficient dose with one or two
tablespoonfuls of cold water, three times in the day.
[572] The fluid extract made from the plant is curative of any
ulcerative soreness within the mouth, such as nurses' sore mouth, or
canker. It should be given internally, and applied locally to the
sore parts.
Spaniards and Italians eat Tomatoes with pepper and oil. We take
them as a salad, or stewed with butter, after slicing and stuffing
them with bread crumb, and a spice of garlic.
The green Tomato makes a good pickle, and in its unripe state is
esteemed an excellent sauce with rich roast pork, or goose. The fruit
when cooked no longer exercises active medicinal effects, as its
volatile principles have now become dispelled through heat.
By the late Mr. Shirley Hibberd, who was a good naturalist, it was
asserted with seeming veracity that the cannibal inhabitants of the
Fiji Islands hold in high repute a native Tomato which is named by
them the _Solanum anthropophagorutm_, and which they eat, _par
excellence_, with "Cold Missionary." Nearer home a worthy dame
has been known with pious aspirations to enquire at the stationer's
for "Foxe's book of To-Martyrs."
"Chops and Tomato sauce" were ordered from Mrs. Bardell, in
Pickwick's famous letter. "Gentlemen!" says Serjeant Buzfuz, in his
address to the jury, "What does this mean?" But he missed a point in
not going on to add--"I need not tell you, gentlemen, the popular
name for the Tomato is _love apple_! Is it not manifest, therefore,
what the base deceiver intended?"
"A cucumber in early spring
Might please a sated Caesar,
Rapture asparagus can bring,
And dearer still green peas are:
Oh! far and wide, where mushrooms hide,
I'll search, as wide and far too
For watercress; but all their pride
Must stoop to thee,--Tomato!"
[573] TORMENTIL.
The Tormentil (_Potentilla Tormentilla_) belongs to the tribe of
wild Roses, and is a common plant on our heaths, banks, and dry
pastures. It is closely allied to the _Potentilla_, but bears only four
petals on its flowers, which are of bright yellow. The woody roots
are medicinally useful because of their astringent properties.
Sometimes the stem is trailing, making this the _Tormentilla
Reptans_, but more commonly it ascends. The name comes from
_tormina_, which signifies such griping of the intestines as the herb
will serve to relieve, as likewise the twinges of toothache. The root
is employed both for tanning leather, and for dyeing it by the
thickened red juice. Furthermore through its astringency this root is
admirable for arresting bleedings. Vesalius considered it to be as
useful against syphilis as Guiacum, and Sarsaparilla. A decoction of
Tormentil makes a capital gargle, and will heal ulcers of the mouth
if used as a wash. If a piece of lint soaked therein be kept applied to
warts, they will wither and disappear. Chemically the herb contains
"_Tormentilla Red_," identical with that of the Horse Chestnut, also
tannic, and kinoric acids. The decoction should be made with four
drams to half-a-pint of water boiled together for ten minutes, adding
half a dram of Cinnamon stick at the end of boiling; one or two
tablespoonfuls will be the dose, or of the powdered root (dried) the
dose will be from five to thirty grains.
"_In fluxu sanguinis, fluore albo, et mictu involuntario Tormentilla
valet_." Dr. Thornton (1810) tells of a labouring botanist who learnt
the powers of this root, and by its decoction, sweetened with honey,
cured intractable agues, severe diarrhoeas, and scorbutic ulcers
(which had been turned out of hospitals as inveterate), [578] also
many fluxes. Lord William Russell heard about this, and allowed
the poor man a piece of his park in which to cultivate the herb,
"_Non est vegetabile quod in fluxionibus alvi efficacius est_." The
root is so rich in tannin that it may be used instead of oak bark.