"Aches" (Vol. ix., pp. 351. 409.).—Aches, as a dissyllable, may be heard any day in Shropshire: "My yead eaches" (my head aches) is no uncommon complaint in reply to an inquiry about health.
Wm. Fraser, B.C.L.
"Waestart" (Vol. ix., p. 349.).—The querist, I humbly presume, is not a Yorkshireman himself; or, probably, he would have at once resolved waestart into the ungrammatical but natural inquiry, "Where ist' 'art"—ist' meaning are you, thou being vulgarly used for you; the h is elided in hurt, the u in 'urt being pronounced as a, changing the vowel, as is very common among the illiterate. For instance, church is often called charch by those who live a little to the north-west; and person, where the e is almost equivalent to the soft u in sound, is made into parson!
L. J.
Willow Bark in Ague (Vol. ix., p. 452.).—In the Philosophical Transactions (1835?) is a memoir by the Rev. E. Stone, of Chipping Norton, of the salutary effects of the bark of the Duck Willow in agues and intermittent fevers. The author states, that being dried in an oven, and pounded, and administered in doses of one drachm every four hours in the intervals of the paroxysms, it soon reduces the distemper; and, except in very severe cases, removes it entirely. With the addition of one fifth part of Peruvian bark, it
becomes a specific against these disorders, and never fails to remove them. One advantage it possesses of influencing the patient beneficially immediately it is adopted, without the necessity of preparation previously. It is a safe medicine, and may be taken in water or tea.
I copy the above from an entry in an old notebook. I imagine the Duck Willow to be the Common White Willow (Salix albæ vulgaris) of Ray.
Shirley Hibberd.
See Pereira's Materia Medica: Salix. He refers to a paper by the Rev. Mr. Stone in the Phil. Trans. vol. liii. p. 195., on the efficacy of the bark of the Salix alba as a remedy for agues. See also A. T. Thomson's London Dispensatory, in which is given an account of Mr. Stone's mode of administration.
H. J.