Tragus, a physician and botanist like Cæsalpin, recommends the juice of the nightshade as anti-choleraic, as well as efficacious in inflammation of the liver and stomach. And yet, at the same time, he grows emphatic in reference to its poisonous properties. "Do not," he says, "employ this herb immoderately, lest it should happen to you as, in 1541, I saw it happen to an inhabitant of Erbach, near Hohenburg. After having eaten a few nightshade-berries, he was seized, on the following day, by a furious monomania, which led his neighbours to believe him possessed of a devil. After having uselessly employed every kind of exorcism, they sent for me. I made my patient swallow some very strong wine; he fell into a profound slumber; and, when he awoke, was cured."[27] Withering affirms that a couple of grains of the dried leaves will act as a powerful sudorific, and that they have also been found useful in some cutaneous disorders. Here is another authority, before whom naturalists are accustomed to give way. We make use of the _Solanum nigrum_, says Tournefort,[28] when it is necessary to subdue inflammation, or soften and relax the fibres. The pounded herb is applied to hæmorrhoids. The juice, with a sixth-part of rectified spirit-of-wine, is advantageous in cases of erysipelas, ringworm, wildfire, and all diseases of the skin. Nightshade is also employed in anodyne cataplasms. * * * * * Tournefort did not confine himself to simple botanical descriptions; he did, what our modern botanists neglect doing,--he made experiments, both physiological and chemical, on the plants employed in medicine. Thus, he began by tasting the different parts of the plant. "The root," he says, "is almost insipid; the leaves taste like a saltish herb; there is something sharp and vinegary in the fruit; the whole plant has a narcotic odour. The _leaves_ do not redden turnsole,[29] but the ripe _fruit_ reddens it greatly; whence we may conjecture that the _sal-ammoniac_ contained in this plant is moderated in the leaves by a very considerable portion of fœtid oil and earth, but that the acid portion of the salt is strongly developed in the ripe fruit; so that we must choose our part of the plant according to the purposes we wish to employ it for. The fruits, for instance, are more refreshing, but more repellant, than the leaves, which soften while resolving, cleansing, and absorbing." We admit that these data leave much to be desired from a chemical point of view. We may well ask, for example, how the illustrious philosopher ascertained the presence of sal-ammoniac in nightshade? But it is not fair to criticise the science of the past, by judging it through the deceitful prism of the science of to-day. We must adopt the methods of our predecessors, when discussing natural productions from all the view-points of their applications. DOG'S-TOOTH GRASS.