NETTLE

Herbal Remedies and Medicinal Uses of Nettle:

This is a valuable plant. The young shoots in spring, form a wholesome vegetable, boiled, like other greens. Nettle broth is good against the scurvy. It is a great purifier of the blood, and removes the phlegmatic superfluities left in the body by winter. A table-spoonful of the expressed juice given four times a day stops spitting of blood; and lint dipped in it, and put up the nostrils, has stopped bleeding at the nose, when every other remedy has failed. Cancers have been said to yield to the juice of nettles, rubbingwith the juice mixed with oil and laudanum, and the juice taken inwardly very freely.

Paralytic parts, being stung with nettles have regained their vigour, and the use of limbs, lost by rheumatism, has been restored. Excessive corpulency may be reduced by taking a few of the seeds only. Fourteen or fifteen of these seeds powdered, and taken night and morning, will cure goitre, or enlargement of the thoroid gland, causing frightful swelling of the throat, without injuring the stomach or the health. It is a good gargle for it, and a poultice of the leaves should be applied. Nettle is anti- asthmatic; the juice of the roots or leaves made into an electuary with honey and sugar opens the bronchial tubes of the lungs, the stoppage of which causes wheezing, short­ness of breath, etcetera. It stimulates expectoration of phlegm very freely.

Nettle is a good deobstruent for suppressed menstruation, used as a decoction, and for the retention of urine, for the gravel and stone. For this purpose the flowers and seed should be made into a conserve. The decoction kills worms in children.

Some say that a Nettle leaf put upon the tongue, and pressed against the roof of the mouth, will restrain bleeding of the nose. "The fresh juice of the Nettle has been highly recommended," says Dr. Spencer Thompson," in cases of internal hemorrhage, particularly from the lungs and womb. Dose one tea-spoonful three times a day.

Nettle is now coming into use as a material for the manufacture of paper. The seeds serve to fatten fowls, and are said to infuse life and spirit into horses.