PURSLANE.

Description:

Portulaca Sativa.—Garden Purslane, as a salad herb is so well known as to require no description.

Herbal Remedies and Medicinal Uses of Purslane:

Purslane is good to cool heat in the liver, blood, reins, and stomach, and in hot agues nothing better. It restrains hot and choleric fluxes, the whites and gonorrhea, distillation from the head, and pains therein proceeding from heat, want of sleep, or the frenzy.

The seed of purslane is more effectual than the herb to cool the heat and sharpness of urine. The seed bruised and boiled in wine, and given to children, destroys worms. The juice of the herb is effectual to stay vomitings, and taken with some sugar or honey, it relieves an old dry cough, shortness of breath, and immoderate thirst.

Purslane juice also is singularly good in the inflammations and ulcers of the privities and bowels. The herb bruised and applied to the forehead and temples, allays excessive heat, and applied to the eyes, it removes inflammation and St. Anthony's fire. If a little vinegar be put to it, and laid to the neck, with as much of galls and linseed together, it takes away pain. The juice is used with oil of roses for the same purposes; applied to the navels of children that project, it reduces them; it is also good for sore mouths and gums that are swollen, and to fasten loose teeth.

Camerarius says that the distilled water took away pain in the teeth, when all other remedies failed, and the thickened juice made into pills with the powder of gum tragacanth and arable, being taken, is a remedy far bloody urine, and applied to gouty limbs, it eases pain.