"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.
TURNIP.
The Turnip (Brassica Rapa) belongs to the Cruciferous Cabbage tribe, being often found growing in waste places, though not truly wild. In this state it is worth nothing to man or beast; but, by cultivation, it becomes a most valuable food for cattle in the winter, and a good vegetable for our domestic uses. It exercises some aperient action, and the liquid in which turnips are boiled will increase the flow of urine. It is called also "bagie," and was the "gongyle" of the Greeks, so named from the roundness of the root.
When mashed, and mixed with bread and milk, the Turnip makes an excellent cleansing and stimulating poultice for indolent abscesses or sores.
The Scotch eat small, yellow-rooted Turnips as we do radishes. "Tastes and Turnips proverbially differ." At Plymouth, and some other places, when a girl rejects a suitor, she is said to "give him turnips," probably with reference to his sickly pallor of disappointment.
The seventeenth of June—as the day of St. Botolph, the old turnip man,—is distinguished by various uses of a Turnip, because in the Saga, which figuratively represents the seasons, the seeds were sown on that day.