The common Garden Thyme is an imported sort from the South of Europe. Its odour and taste depend on an essential oil known commercially as oil of origanum.
Another variety of the Wild Thyme is Lemon Thyme (Thymus citriodorus), distinguished by its parti-coloured leaves, and by its lilac flowers. Small beds of this Thyme, together with mint, are cultivated at Penzance, in which to rear millepedes, or hoglice, administered as pills for several forms of scrofulous disease. The woodlouse, sowpig, or hoglouse abounds with a nitrous salt which has long found favour for curing scrofulous [565] disease, and inveterate struma, as also against some kinds of stone in the bladder.
The Hoglouse, or Millepede was the primitive medicinal pill. It is found in dry gardens under stones, etc., and rolls itself up into a ball when touched. These are also called Chiselbobs, and Cudworms. From three to twelve were formerly given in Rhenish wine for a hundred days together to cure all kinds of cancers; or they were sometimes worn round the neck in a small bag (which was absurd!). In the Eastern counties they are known as "Old Sows," or "St. Anthony's Hogs." Their Latin name is Porcellus Scaber. The Welsh call this small creature the "withered old woman of the wood," "the little pig of the wood," and "the little grey hog," also "Grammar Sows." Their word "gurach" like "grammar" means a dried up old dame.
Cat Thyme (Teucrium marum verum) was imported from Spain, and is cultivated in our gardens as a cordial aromatic herb, useful in nervous disorders. Its flowers are crimson, and its bark is astringent. The dried leaves may be given in powder or used in snuff. A tincture (H.) is made from the whole herb which is effectual against small thread worms. Provers of the herb in material toxic quantities have experienced troublesome itching and irritation of the fundament. For similar conditions, and to expel thread worms, two or three drops of the tincture diluted to its first decimal strength should be given with a spoonful of water three or four times in the day to a child of from four to six years.
TOADFLAX.
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."