Water-cresses squeezed and laid against warts were said by the Saxon leeches to work a certain cure on these excrescences. In France the Water-cress is dipped in oil and vinegar to be eaten at table with chicken or a steak. The Englishman takes it at his morning or evening meal, with bread and butter, or at dinner in a salad. It loses some of its pungent flavour and of its curative qualities [132] when cultivated; and therefore it is more appetising and useful when freshly gathered from natural streams. But these streams ought to be free from contamination by sewage matter, or any drainage which might convey the germs of fever, or other blood poison: for, as we are admonished, the Water-cress plant acts as a brush in impure running brooks to detain around its stalks and leaves any dirty disease-bringing flocculi. Some of our leading druggists now make for medicinal use a liquid extract of the _Nasturtium officinale_, and a spirituous juice (or _succus_) of the plant. These preparations are of marked service in scorbutic cases, where weakness exists without wasting, and often with spongy gums, or some skin eruption. They are best when taken with lemon juice. The leaf of the unwholesome Water parsnep, or Fool's Cress, resembles that of the Water-cress, and grows near it not infrequently: but the leaves of the true Water-cress never embrace the stem of the plant as do the leaf stalks of its injurious imitators. Herrick the joyous poet of "dull Devonshire" dearly loved the Water-cress, and its kindred herbs. He piously and pleasantly made them the subject of a quaint grace before meat:-- "Lord, I confess too when I dine The pulse is Thine: And all those other bits that be There placed by Thee: The wurts, the perslane, and the mess of Water-cress." The true _Nasturtium_ (_Tropoeolum majus_), or greater Indian Cress grows and is cultivated in our flower gardens as a brilliant ornamental creeper. It was brought from Peru to France in 1684, and was called _La grande Capucine_, whilst the botanical title _tropoeolum_, [133] a trophy, was conferred because of its shield-like leaves, and its flowers resembling a golden helmet. An old English name for the same plant was Yellow Lark's heels.