It is very good for Burns and Scalds.
An Achariston, or Medicine deserving thanks.
An Indian whose Thumb was swell’d, and very much inflamed, and full of pain, increasing and creeping along to the wrist, with little black spots under the Thumb against the Nail; I Cured it with this Umbellicus veneris Root and all, the Yolk of an Egg, and Wheat flower, f. Cataplasme.
Briony of Peru, (we call it though it grown hear) or rather Scammony; some take it for Mechoacan: The green Juice is absolutely Poyson; yet the Root when dry may safely be given to strong Bodies.[211]
Red and Black Currence. [See before].
Wild Damask Roses, single, but very large and sweet, but stiptick.[212]
Sweet Fern,[213] the Roots run one within another like a Net, being very long and spreading abroad under the upper crust of {59} the Earth, sweet in taste, but withal astringent, much hunted after by our Swine: The Scotchmen that are in New-England have told me that it grows in Scotland.
For Fluxes.
The People boyl the tender tops in Molosses Beer, and in Possets for Fluxes, for which it is excellent.
Sarsaparilia, a Plant not yet sufficiently known by the English: Some say it is a kind of Bind Weed; we have, in New-England two Plants, that go under the name of Sarsaparilia: the one not above a foot in height without Thorns, the other having the same Leaf, but is a shrub as high as a Goose Berry Bush, and full of sharp Thorns; this I esteem as the right, by the shape and savour of the Roots, but rather by the effects answerable to that we have from other parts of the World; It groweth upon dry Sandy banks by the Sea side, and upon the banks of Rivers, so far as the Salt water flowes; and within Land up in the Country, as some have reported.[214]