Garden Rue

It was anciently valued for its medicinal virtues; but has of late been little esteemed. This is a mistake; for if valuable at one time, why not now? strange if herbs are to be subjected to " the fashions.".

Garden rue acts as a stimulant, and antispasmodic; but in large doses it is narcotic. It is very useful in hysteria, and in flatulent colic. It has been found useful in infantile convulsions, and as a destroyer of worms, especially the thread-worms, used as an injection. In accumulations of flatulence in the bowels, tympanitis, a strong infusion of rue given as an injection, is of great use. In suppressed menstruation, when stimulants are required, the rue clyster is of great use. Boerhaave says that mixed with wine and salt, it stops gangrene, restores vitality to the part, prevents suppuration and heals the hand. Medical men sadly neglect rue, as a medicinal agent. Why go to foreign lands when we have remedies at our doors?.

A decoction of it relieves the colic, and all inward pains. The leaves bruised and well rubabed on the parts, relieves pain, sciatica, inflammation of the chest. Some of the ancients believed that it arrested generation. They regarded it too as antipestilential, and the judges had their noses regaled with this fetid plant; they believed that mithridrate, in which rue has a principal share, repelled all poisons. Rue, and honey, and the gall of a cock, they said, cured dimness of sight. An ointment, made of the juice with lard, oil of roses, and a little vinegar, cures erysipelas, running sores in the head, and ulcers.

The antidote used by mithridates, every morning fasting, to secure himself from any poison or infection was this: take twenty leaves of rue, a little salt, two walnuts and two figs, beaten into a mess, with twenty juniper berries, the quantity appointed for every day.

Another electuary is made thus: take of nitre, pepper, and cumminaseed, of each equal parts; of the leaves of rue clean picked, as much in weight as all the rest, beat them well together, and put as much honey as will make it up into an electuary, (but you must first steep your cummin-seed in vinegar twenty-four hours, and then rather roast it in a hot oven) and it is a remedy for pains in the chest or stomach, of the spleen, belly, or side, by wind or stitches, of the liver by obstructions, of the reins and bladder by the stopping of urine, and it reduces corpulency. The fresh leaves have been applied to the temples to relieve headache. A decoction of the herb in wine, used as a gargle, is a good remedy for scurvy in the gums.