GROUND MOSS--Is a first rate cure for gravel, as it dissolves and carries it away with the urine. It grows in shady places, at the bottom of hollows. Boiled in water, it is good in inflammations, and cures the gout and rheumatism.
Tree mosses are cooling and binding, partaking of a mollifying quality. Each moss partakes of the nature of the tree on which it grows: that which grows on the oak is the most binding, and is good for fluxes, puking, and bleeding; powder them, and, taken in wine, good in profuse flowing. As a tea, good for dropsy; steeped in vinegar, good for headache caused by heat; used in ointment, good for shrunk sinews.
Moss, taken from the maple tree, is good, sweetened with honey, for a bad cough, and for consumptive persons.
FOR A RELAX.--Take equal parts of beeswax and mutton tallow, mix and simmer in molasses; give a tablespoonful warm to a grown person, reducing the dose for children.
RHEUMATIC OINTMENT.--Stramonium leaves, or juice, and poke root; add hogs’ fat and tallow.
A POULTICE FOR RHEUMATISM.--Elecampane roots and burdock roots and leaves, put on hot, will cure rheumatic affections in a few days. Inwardly, use a tea made of smartweed, adding a very little black cohosh. Great care must be taken in using black cohosh, as an overdose is very dangerous. Those unacquainted with its properties should use the smartweed alone.
Poke root and spikenard make a good poultice; must be put on hot and often.
BALSAM OF LIFE.--Gum benzoin, 4 oz.; gum storax, 3 oz.; socatrine aloes and gum myrrh, each, 1½ oz.; angelica root and johnwort tops, each, 2 oz.; pound all together; put them into three pints of rectified spirits of wine, and let it stand four weeks; keep warm, shaking it every day, strain and it is fit for use; thirteen or fourteen drops to be taken in a spoonful of wine. This balsam is good for all in consumptive complaints, weakness, whooping cough, pain in the side; to be taken morning and evening.
SALT RHEUM.--One pint yellow dock root, boil till the strength is out, strain and add one pint spirits turpentine, one pound fresh butter, four ounces burgundy pitch, two ounces mutton tallow, two ounces beeswax, for summer use, (for winter, use only half the quantity of mutton tallow and beeswax.) Simmer together three hours, stirring it all the time; do not let it burn.