Earache Cure

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Use Caraway

Earache cure with caraway. What is caraway?

The common Caraway is a herb of the umbelliferous order found growing on many waste places in England, though not a true
native of Great Britain. Its well-known aromatic seeds should be always at hand in the cupboard of every British housewife. The plant got its name from inhabiting Caria, a province of Asia Minor. It is now cultivated for commerce in Kent and Essex; and the essential oil distilled from the home grown fruit is preferred in this country. The medicinal properties of the Caraway are cordial and comforting to [82] the stomach in colic and in flatulent indigestion; for which troubles a dose of from two to four drops of the essential oil of Caraway may be given on a lump of sugar, or
in a teaspoonful of hot water.

For earache, in some districts the country people pound up the crumb of a loaf hot from the oven, together with a handful of
bruised Caraway seeds; then wetting the whole with some spirit, they apply it to the affected part. The plant has been long naturalised in England, and was known here in Shakespeare's time, who mentions it in the second part of _Henry IV_. thus: "Come, cousin Silence! we will eat a pippin of last year's graffing, with a dish of caraways; and then to bed!" The seeds grow numerously in the small flat flowers placed thickly together on each floral plateau, or umbel, and are best known to us in seed cake, and in Caraway comfits. They are really the dried fruit, and possess,
when rubbed in a mortar, a warm aromatic taste, with a fragrant spicy smell. Caraway comfits consist of these fruits encrusted with white sugar; but why the wife of a comfit maker should be given to swearing, as Shakespeare avers, it is not easy to see. The young roots of Caraway plants may be sent to table like parsnips; they
warm and stimulate a cold languid stomach. These mixed with milk and made into bread, formed the _chara_ of Julius Caesar, eaten by the soldiers of Valerius. Chemically the volatile oil obtained from Caraway seeds consists of "carvol," and a ydro-carbon, "carvene," which is a sort of "camphor." Dioscorides long ago advised the oil for pale-faced girls; and modern ladies have not disregarded the counsel.

From six pounds of the unbruised seeds, four ounces of the pure essential oil can be expressed. In Germany the peasants flavour their cheese, soups, and household bread--jager--with the Caraway; and this is not a modern custom, for an old Latin author says: _Semina carui satis communiter adhibentur ad condiendum panem; et rustica nostrates estant jusculum e pane, seminibus carui, et cerevisâ coctum_.

The Russians and Germans make from Caraways a favourite
liqueur "Kummel," and the Germans add them as a flavouring condiment to their sawerkraut. In France Caraways enter into the composition of _l'huile de Venus_, and of other renowned cordials.

An ounce of the bruised seeds infused for six hours in a pint of cold water makes a good Caraway julep for infants, from one to
three teaspoonfuls for a dose, It "consumeth winde, and is delightful to the stomack; the powdered seed put into a poultice taketh away blacke and blew spots of blows and bruises." "The oil, or seeds of Caraway do sharpen vision, and promote the secretion
of milk." Therefore dimsighted men and nursing mothers may courageously indulge in seed cake!

The name Caraway comes from the Gaelic _Caroh_, a ship, because
of the shape which the fruit takes. By cultivation the root becomes more succulent, and the fruit larger, whilst more oily, and therefore acquiring an increase of aromatic taste and odour. In Germany the seeds are given for hysterical affections, being finely powdered and mixed with ginger and salt to spread with butter on
bread. As a draught for flatulent colic twenty grains of the powdered seeds may be taken with two teaspoonfuls of sugar in a wineglassful of hot water. Caraway-seed cake was formerly a standing institution at the feasts given by farmers to their labourers at the end of wheat sowing. But narcotic effects have been known to follow the chewing of Caraway seeds in a large quantity, such as three ounces at a time.

As regards its stock of honey the Caraway may be termed, like Uriah Heep, and in a double sense, "truly umbel." The diminutive florets on its flat disk are so shallow that lepidopterous and hymenopterous insects, with their long proboses, stand no chance of getting a meal. They fare as poorly as the stork did in the fable, whom the fox invited to dinner served on a soup plate. As Sir John Lubbock has shown, out of fifty-five visitants to the Caraway plant for nectar, one moth, nine bees, wenty-one flies, and twenty-four miscellaneous midges constituted the dinner party.

Barberry Herb

What is BARBERRY

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Also known as: Berberis vulgaris, mountain grape, pepperidge, berberry, common grape

The Common Barberry (_Berberis_), which gives its name to aspecial order of plants, grows wild as a shrub in our English copses and hedges, particularly about Essex, being so called from
Berberin, a pearl oyster, because the leaves are glossy like the inside of an oyster shell. It is remarkable for the light colour of its bark, which is yellow inside, and for its three-forked spines. Provincially it is also termed Pipperidge-bush, from "pepin," a pip,and "rouge," red, as descriptive of its small scarlet juiceless fruit,
of which the active chemical principles, as well as of the bark, are "berberin" and "oxyacanthin." The sparingly-produced juice of the berries is cooling and astringent. It was formerly held in high esteem by the Egyptians, when diluted as a drink, in pestilential fevers. The inner, yellow bark, which has been long believed to exercise a medicinal effect on the liver, because of its colour, is a true biliary purgative. An infusion of this bark, made with boiling water, is useful in jaundice from congestive liver, with furred tongue, lowness of spirits, and yellow complexion; also for swollen spleen from malarious exposure. A medicinal tincture (H.)is made of the root-branches and the root-bark, with spirit of wine; and if given three or four times a day in doses of five drops with one tablespoonful of cold water, it will admirably rouse the liver to healthy and more vigorous action. Conversely the tincture when of reduced strength will stay bilious diarrhoea. British farmers dislike the Barberry shrub because, when it grows in cornfields, the wheat near it is blighted, even to the distance of two or three hundred yards. This is because of a special fungus which is common to the Barberry, and being carried by the wind reproduces itself by its spores destructively on the ears of wheat, the AEcidium Berberidis, which generates Puccinia.

Clusius setteth it down as a wonderful secret which he had from a friend, "that if the yellow bark of Barberry be steeped in white wine for three hours, and be afterwards drank, it will purge one very marvellously."

The berries upon old Barberry shrubs are often stoneless, and this is the best fruit for preserving or for making the jelly. They contain malic and citric acids; and it is from these berries that the delicious _confitures d'epine vinette_, for which Rouen is famous,are commonly prepared. And the same berries are chosen in England to furnish the kernel for a very nice sugar-plum. The syrup of Barberries will make with water an excellent astringent gargle for raw, irritable sore throat; likewise the jelly gives famous relief for this catarrhal affection. It is prepared by boiling the berries, when ripe, with an equal weight of sugar, and then straining. For an attack of colic because of gravel in the kidneys,five drops of the tincture on sugar every five minutes will promptly relieve, as likewise when albumen is found by analysis in the urine.

A noted modern nostrum belauds the virtues of the Barberry as specific against bile, heartburn, and the black jaundice, this being a remedy which was "discovered after infinite pains by one who had studied for thirty years by candle light for the good of his countrymen." In Gerard's time at the village of Ivor, near Colebrooke, most of the hedges consisted solely of Barberry
bushes.

The following is a good old receipt for making Barberry
jam:--Pick the fruit from the stalks, and bake it in an earthen pan;then press it through a sieve with a wooden spoon. Having mixed equal
weights of the prepared fruit, and of powdered sugar, put these together in pots, and cover the mixture up, setting them in a dry place, and having sifted some powdered sugar over the top of each pot. Among the Italians the Barberry bears the name of Holy Thorn, because thought to have formed part of the crown of thorns made for our Saviour.