If eaten to excess, especially by young persons, grapes will make the tongue and the lining membrane of the mouth sore, just as honey often acts. For this reason, both grapes and honey do good to the affection known as thrush, with sore raw mouth, and tongue in ulcerative white patches, coming on as a derangement of the health. GRASSES. Our abundant English grasses furnish nutritious herbage and farinaceous seeds, whilst their stems and leaves prove useful for textile purposes. Furthermore, some few of them possess distinctive medicinal virtues, with mucilaginous roots, and may be properly classed among Herbal Simples. The Sweet-scented Vernal Grass (Anthoxanthum, with Yellow Anthers) gives its delightfully characteristic odour to newly mown meadow hay, and has a pleasant aroma of Woodruff. But it is specially provocative of hay fever and hay asthma with persons liable to suffer from these distressing ailments. Accordingly, a medicinal tincture is made (H.) from this grass with spirit of wine, and if some of the same is poured into the open hand-palms for the volatile aroma to be sniffed well into the nose and throat, immediate relief is afforded during an attack. At the same time three or four drops of the tincture should be taken as a dose with water, and [242] repeated at intervals of twenty or thirty minutes, as needed. The flowers contain "coumarin," and their volatile pollen impregnates the atmosphere in early summer. The sweet perfume is due chiefly to benzoic acid, such as is used for making scented pastilles, or Ribbon of Bruges for fumigation. Again, the Couch Grass, Dog Grass, or Quilch (_Triticum repens_) found freely in road-sides, fields, and waste places, has been employed from remote times as a vulnerary, and to relieve difficulties of urination. Our English wheat has been evolved therefrom. In modern days its infusion--of the root--is generally regarded as a soothing diuretic, helpful to the bladder and kidneys. Formerly, this was a popular drink to purify the blood in the Spring. But no special constituents have been discovered in the root besides a peculiar sugar, a gum-like principle, _triticin_, and some lactic acid. The decoction may be made from the whole fresh plant, or from the dried root sliced, two to four ounces being put in a quart of water, reduced to a pint by boiling. A wineglassful of this may be given for a dose. It certainly palliates irritation of the urinary passages, and helps to relieve against gravel. A liquid extract is also dispensed by the druggists, of which from one to two teaspoonfuls are given in water. The French specially value this grass for its stimulating fragrancy of vanilla and rose perfumes in the decoction. They use the Cocksfoot Grass (_Dactylis_), or _pied de poule_, in a similar way, and for the same purposes.