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CHAP. 74.—LUPINES: THIRTY-FIVE REMEDIES.

There are wild lupines,1 also, inferior in every respect to the cultivated kinds, except in their bitterness. Of all the alimentary substances, there are none which are less heavy or more useful2 than dried lupines. Their bitterness is considerably modified by cooking them on hot ashes, or steeping them in hot water. Employed frequently as an article of food, they impart freshness to the colour; the bitter lupine, too, is good for the sting of the asp. Dried lupines, stripped of the husk and pounded, are applied in a linen cloth to black ulcers, in which they make new flesh: boiled in vinegar, they disperse scrofu- lous sores and imposthumes of the parotid glands. A decoction of them, with rue and pepper, is given in fever even, as an expellent of intestinal worms,3 to patients under thirty years of age. For children, also, they are applied to the sto- mach as a vermifuge, the patient fasting in the meantime and, according to another mode of treatment, they are parched and taken in boiled must or in honey.

Lupines have the effect of stimulating the appetite, and of dispelling nausea. The meal of them, kneaded up with vinegar, and applied in the bath, removes pimples and prurigo; employed alone, it dries up ulcerous sores. It cures bruises also, and, used with polenta, allays inflammations. The wild lupine is found to be the most efficacious for debility of the hips and loins. A decoction of them, used as a fomentation, removes freckles and improves the skin; and lupines, either wild or cultivated, boiled down to the consistency of honey, are a cure for black eruptions and leprosy. An application of cultivated lupines causes carbuncles to break, and reduces inflamed tumours and scrofulous sores, or else brings them to a head: boiled in vinegar, they restore the flesh when cicatrized to its proper colour. Thoroughly boiled in rain-water, the decoction of them furnishes a detersive medicine, of which fomentations are made for gangrenes, purulent eruptions, and runing ulcers. This decoction is very good, taken in drink, for affections of the spleen, and with honey, for retardations of the catamenia. Beaten up raw, with dried figs, lupines are applied externally to the spleen. A decoction of the root acts as a diuretic.

The herb chamæleon,4 also, is boiled with lupines, and the water of it strained off, to be used as a potion for cattle. Lupines boiled in amurca,5 or a decoction of them mixed with amurca, heals the itch in beasts. The smoke of lupines kills6 gnats.

1 See B. xviii. c. 10.

2 Fée remarks that it is surprising to find the ancients setting so much value on the lupine, a plant that is bitter and almost nauseous, difficult to boil, and bad of digestion.

3 It must be the rue, Fée says, that acts as the vermifuge.

4 See c. 24 of this Book.

5 Lees of olive oil.

6 This is not the fact.

The Natural History. Pliny the Elder. John Bostock, M.D., F.R.S. H.T. Riley, Esq., B.A. London. Taylor and Francis, Red Lion Court, Fleet Street. 1855.

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