Agrimony.

Agrimonia Eupatoria.

Natural Order—Rosaceae.
Linnean System: Class 11, Dordicandria; Order 2nd, Digynia.

This is a common plant all over England, and is found growing in the hedgerows, pastures, and wood-sides. Its leaves are long, dented at the edges, hairy underneath, and greyish and green above. The stem is brown, hairy, round and strong, and grows to about from two to three feet high, with smaller leaves at the top. It grows small yellow flowers, one above another in long spikes. The root is black and long. It is perennial, and flowers about July and August.

Therapeutic Principles: Resin, Resinoid, and Neutral.

Medicinal Properties: Tonic, Astringent, Stomachic, Hepatic, Diuretic, Stimulant, and Diaphoretic.

The diseases in which its employment is indicated are biliousness, sickness, and vomiting before or after meals, swelling after meals, sour eructations, dropsy, stone, gravel, sick headache, waterbrash, diabetes, and general debility. For dyspeptic complaints, jaundice and diseases of the liver, the following recipe has been found of great service:—

Agrimony, 1 oz.
Dandelion Root, 1 oz.
Lump Ginger, crushed, ½ oz.

Bruise the root, and boil in 2 quarts of water down to 3 pints; let it cool, strain, and take a wineglassful four times a day. If the bowels are constipated, use a good herbal aperient pill to relieve them, but endeavour to regulate the bowels with food. For this purpose use brown bread, and instead of butter use stewed figs or prunes, apples, or rhubarb.

Agrimony is a specific for creating a healthy appetite, and for this purpose 1 oz. of the herb, infused in 1 pint of boiling water, and taken when cold in wineglassful doses one hour before meals, will be found satisfactory.

Health from British Wild Herbs was written by Richard Lawrence Hool, N.A.M.H., in 1918.