The bark or yellow skin which clothes the inner nut is a notable remedy for colic, being given when dried and powdered, in a dose of thirty or forty grains mixed with some carminative water; and the same powder will help to expel worms.
According to the Salernitan maxim, if the fruit of the Walnut be eaten after fish, the digestion of the latter is promoted:—
Post pisces nux sit: post carnes case us esto.
Or,
"Take Welsh nuts after fish: take cheese after flesh meat."
But with some persons coughing is excited by eating Walnuts.
The roots, leaves, and rind yield a brown dye which is supposed to contain iodine, and which gipsies employ for staining their skins. It also serves to turn the hair black. A custom prevails (says a Latin sentence) among certain country folk to thrash the nuts out of their husks while still on the trees, so that they may grow more abundantly the following year. In allusion to which practice the lines run thus:—
"Nux, asinus, mulier, simili sunt lege ligata;
Haec trieo nil fructûs faciunt si verbera cessant."
"A woman, a donkey, a walnut tree—
The more you beat them, the better they be."
[600] It is a fact, that by acting in this way, the barren ends of the branches are knocked off, and fresh fruit-bearing twigs spring out at each side in their stead.