of hot water; or, if Peppermint water be chosen, the dose of this should be from half to one wineglassful. Distilled Peppermint water should be preferred to that prepared by adding the essence to common water. Lozenges made of the oil, or the essence, are admirable for affording ease in colic, flatulence, and nausea. They will also prevent or relieve sea-sickness. When Tom Hood lay a dying he turned his eyes feebly towards the window on hearing it rattle in the night, whereupon his wife, who was watching him, said softly. "It's only the wind, dear"; to which he replied, with a sense of humour indomitable to the last, "Then put a Peppermint lozenge on the sill." Two sorts of this herb are cultivated for the market--black and white Peppermint, the first of which furnishes the most, but not the best oil. The former has purple stems, and the latter green. As an antiseptic, and destroyer of disease germs, this oil is signally efficacious, [341] on which important account it is now used for inhalation by consumptive patients as a volatile vapour to reach remote diseased parts of the lung passages, and to heal by destroying the morbid germs which are keeping up mischief therein. Towards proving this preservative power exercised by the oil of Peppermint, pieces of meat, and of fat, wrapped in several layers of gauze medicated with the oil have been kept for seven months sweet, and free from putrescent changes. A simple respirator for inhaling the oil is made from a piece of thin perforated zinc plate adapted to the shape of the mouth and nostrils like a small open funnel, within the narrow end of which is fitted a pledget of cotton wool saturated with twenty drops of the oil, or from twenty to thirty drops of the spirituous essence. This should be renewed each night and morning, whilst the apparatus is to be worn nearly all day. At the same time the oil is agreeable of odour, and is altogether harmless. It may be serviceably admixed with liniments for use to rheumatic parts. "Peppermint," says Dr. Hughes (Brighton), "should be more largely employed than it is in coughs, especially in a dry cough, however caused, when it seems to act specifically as a cure, just as arnica does for injuries, or aconite for febrile inflammation. It will relieve even the irritative hectic cough of consumptive patients. Eight or ten drops of the essence should be given for this purpose as a dose with a tablespoonful of water. In France continuous inhalations of Peppermint oil combined with creasote and glycerine, have become used most successfully, even when cavities exist in the lungs, with copious bacillary expectoration. The cough, the night sweats, and the heavy phlegm have been arrested, whilst the nutrition and the weight have steadily increased."