Family Herbal - Electric Scotland

22S FAMILY HERBAL.
The whole plant is used, fresh or dried, and is
excellent against disorders of the stomach. It
will stop vomiting, and create an appetite ; it is
best given in the simple distilled water, well made,
or else in the form of tea. The fresh herb bruised,
and applied outwardly to the stomach, will stop
vomitings.
Water Mint. Mintha aquatica.
A common wild plant of the mint kind, not
so much regarded as it deserves. It is frequent
by ditch sides. It is a foot and half high. The
stalks are .square, upright, firm, and strong, and
generally of a brown colour ; the leaves are broad
and short ; they stand two at a joint, and are of a
brownish or deep green colour, somewhat hairy,
and serrated about the edges. The flowers are
larger than those of common mint, and are of a
stand in round thick clus-
pale red colour ; they
ters at the tops of the stalks, and round the upper
joints. The whole plant has a strong smell,
not disagreeable, but of a mixed kind between
tint of mint, and penny royal : and the taste is
strong and acrid, but it is not to be called able.disagree-
A distilled water of this is
plant
excellent against
colics, pains in the stomach and bowels, and it will
dose of it often
bring down the menses. A single
cures the colic. The use of peppermint has excluded
this kind from the present practice, but
nil three ought to be used. Where a simple weakness
of the stomach is the complaint, the common
mint should be used ; when coliey pains alone,
tli" peppermint ; and where suppressions
of the
n*