The essential oil is medicinally useful for correcting female irregularities, as well as for obviating cold indigestion. The herb is also known as "Maydeweed," because useful against hysterical distempers, to which young women are subject. Taken generally it is a positive tonic to the digestive and nervous systems. Out chemists make a medicinal tincture of Feverfew, the dose of which is from ten to twenty drops, with a spoonful of water, three times a day. This tincture, if dabbed oil the parts with a small sponge, will immediately relieve the pain and swelling caused by bites of insects or vermin. In the official guide to Switzerland directions are given to take "a little powder of the plant called _Pyrethrum roseum_ and make it into a paste with a few drops of spirit, then apply this to the hands and face, or any exposed part of the body, and let it [194] dry: no mosquito or fly will then touch you." Or if two teaspoonfuls of the tincture are mixed with half a pint of cold water, and if all parts of the body likely to be exposed to the bites of insects are freely sponged therewith they will remain unassailed. Feverfew is manifestly the progenitor of the true Chamomilla (_Anthemis nobilis_), from which the highly useful Camomile "blows," so commonly employed in domestic medicine, are obtained, and its flowers, when dried, may be applied to the same purposes. An infusion of them made with boiling water and allowed to become cold, will allay any distressing sensitiveness to pain in a highly nervous subject, and will afford relief to the faceache or earache of a dyspeptic or rheumatic person. This Feverfew (_Chrysanthemum parthenium_), is best calculated to pacify those who are liable to sudden, spiteful, rude irascibility, of which they are conscious, but say they cannot help it, and to soothe fretful children. "Better is a dinner or such herbs, where love is; than a stalled ox, and hatred therewith." FIGS. "In the name of the Prophet 'Figs'" was the pompous utterance ascribed to Dr. Johnson, whose solemn magniloquent style was simulated as Eastern cant applied to common business in _Rejected Addresses_, by the clever humorists, Horace and James Smith, 1812. The tree which produces this fruit belongs to the history of mankind. In Paradise Adam partook of figs, and covered his nakedness with the leaves.