The Common Lycopodium bears in some, districts the name of "Robin Hood's hatband." Its unmoistenable powder from the spores is a capital absorbing application to weeping, raw surfaces. At the shops, this [116] powder of the Club Moss spores is sold as "witch meal," or "vegetable sulphur." For trade purposes it is obtained from the ears of a Wolfsfoot Moss, the Lycopodium clavatum, which grows in the forests of Russia and Finland. The powder is yellow of colour, dust-like and smooth to the touch. Half a drachm of it given during July in any proper vehicle has been esteemed "a noble remedy to cure stone in the bladder." Being mixed with black pepper, it was recognized by the College of Physicians in 1721 as a medicine of singular value for preventing and curing hydrophobia. Dr. Mead, who had repeated experience of its worth, declared that he never knew it to fail when combined with cold bathing.
Club Moss powder ignites with a flicker, and is used for stage lightning. It is the Blitzmehl, or lightning-meal of the Germans, who give it in doses of from fifteen to twenty grains for the cure of epilepsy in children.
When the "Mortal Struggle" was produced (see Nicholas Nickleby) by Mr. Vincent Crummles at Portsmouth, with the aid of Miss Snevelicci, and the Infant Phenomenon, lurid lightning was much in request to astonish the natives; and this was sufficiently well simulated by igniting, with a sudden flash and a hiss, highly inflammable spores of the Club Moss projected against burning tow within a hollow cone, producing weird scenic effects.
COLTSFOOT.
The Coltsfoot, which grows abundantly throughout England in places of moist, heavy soil, especially along the sides of our raised railway banks, has been justly termed "nature's best herb for the lungs, and her most eminent thoracic." Its seeds are supposed to have lain [117] dormant from primitive times, where our railway cuttings now upturn them and set them growing anew; and the rotting foliage of the primeval herb by retaining its juices, is thought to have promoted the development and growth of our common earthworm.
The botanical name of Coltsfoot is Tussilago farfara, signifying tussis ago, "I drive away a cold"; and farfar, the white poplar tree, which has a similar leaf. It is one of the Composite order, and the older authors named this plant, Filius ante patrem—"the son before the father," because the flowers appear and wither before the leaves are produced. These flowers, at the very beginning of Spring, stud the banks with gay, golden, leafless blossoms, each growing on a stiff scaly stalk, and resembling a dandelion in miniature. The leaves, which follow later on, are made often into cigars, or are smoked as British herbal tobacco, being mixed for this purpose with the dried leaves and flowers of the eye-bright, buckbean, betony, thyme, and lavender, to which some persons add rose leaves, and chamomile flowers. All these are rubbed together by the hands into a coarse powder, Coltsfoot forming quite one-half of the same; and this powder may be very beneficially smoked for asthma, or for spasmodic bronchial cough. Linnoeus said, "Et adhuc hodie plebs in Sueciâ, instar tabaci contra tussim fugit"—"Even to-day the Swiss people cure their coughs with Coltsfoot employed like tobacco." When the flowers are fully blown and fall off, the seeds with their "clock" form a beautiful head of white flossy silk, and if this flies away when there is no wind it is said to be a sure sign of coming rain. The Goldfinch often lines her nest with the soft pappus of the Coltsfoot. In Paris the Coltsfoot flower is painted on the doorposts of an apothecary's house.
[118] From earliest times, the plant has been found helpful in maladies of the chest. Hippocrates advised it with honey for "ulcerations of the lungs." Dioscorides, Pliny, and Galen, severally commended the use of its smoke, conducted into the mouth through a funnel or reed, for giving ease to cough and difficult breathing; they named it breechion, from breex, a cough.
In taste, the leaves are harsh, bitter, and mucilaginous. They appear late in March, being green above, with an undersurface which is white, and cottony. Sussex peasants esteem the white down of the leaves as a most valuable medicine.
All parts of the plant contain chemically tannin, with a special bitter principle, and free mucilage; so that the herb is to be considered emollient, demulcent, and tonic. Dr. Cullen employed a decoction of the leaves with much benefit in scrofula, where the use of sea water had failed. And Dr. Fuller tells about a girl cured of twelve scrofulous sores, by drinking daily, for four months, as much as she could of Coltsfoot tea, made so strong from the leaves as to be sweet and glutinous. A modern decoction is prepared from the herb with boiling water poured on the leaves, and with liquorice root and honey added.
But, "hark! I hear the pancake bell," said Poor Richard in his almanack, 1684; alluding to pancakes then made with Coltsfoot, like tansies, and fried with saged butter.