Veronica beccabunga

Volume I — Special Symptomatology

(Brook-lime.)

Botanical Description. — This plant is called by Grey, Veronica Amer. icana. It is perennial, with opposite, usually serrate, leaves ; flowers in axillary, opposite racemes; corolla wheel-shaped, pale blue, with purple

stripes ; pod rounded, notched, many-seeded. Flowers in June and August. Found in brooks and ditches, and grows from eight to fifteen inches high.

Officinal Preparations. — Tincture; dilutions.

Analogues. — (?).

° "Nursing sore mouth." — Stomatitis materna. (Dr. N. F. Prentice,) who gives it internally in the first decimal attenuation, and has an aqueous solution of the same strength applied to the mouth. [King's Dispensatory says: " It is anti-scorbutic, diuretic, vermifuge, and

emmenagogue — useful in scurvy, fever and cough."]

Volume II — Special Therapeutics

We know nothing of this plant beyond a remark by the late Dr. Prentice, that he had used it successfully in stomatitis materna and the aphthous sore mouth in children.

It has been considered by old authorities as antiscorbutic.

That medical archseologist, Dr. S. A. Jones, has been delving in musty and forgotten tomes, and he found therein many rare and curious bits of medical lore.

His latest researches relate to the Veronica. He finds that as early as 1578 one Dodoens wrote of it as follows : “Brooklime leves dranken in wine do help strangullion and the inward scabbes of the bladder.” All those old authorities recommend it against the “ gravel, stone, and scurvy.” It would seem that something ought to be made out of this plant if properly proven and studied.