Small Age

A common wild plant about ditch sides, a kind of parsley, but resembling celery. Leaves many and large; stalks two feet and a half in height, round, smooth, striated, and branched; leaves like those from the root, broad and indented, but smaller. The flowers stand in little umbels at the division of the branches; they are small, of a yellowish white.

Sorrel is useful in all hot diseases to cool inflammation of blood in agues, or sickness and fainting in fevers, and to procure an appetite in fainting, or decaying stomachs. It destroys worms, and is a cordial to the heart. The seed is most powerful and astringent, and very useful in the bloody flux. The root in decoction, or in powder, is effectual for all these purposes. The decoction of the roots is good against jaundice, and the gravel and stone in the kidneys.

The decoction of the flowers made with wine cures the black jaundice, and ulcerated bowels. A syrup made with the juice of sorrel and fumitory, is a sovereign remedy for the itch. The juice with a little vinegar, is a cure for tetters, ring-worms, etcetera. It removes kernels and sores in the throat; the juice being gargled in the mouth. The leaves wrapped in a cababage-leaf, roasted, and applied to a hard imposthume, boil or plague sore, ripen and break it.