According to Dioscorides, it is emmenagogue and abortive, anti-hæmorrhagic, and a remedy for sciatica. In Salmon's _Doren Medicum_ (1683) it is said: "The seed provokes urine and the courses, kills the _foetus_, resists poyson, breaks inward apostems, and, being taken in [Latin: ezh]ij, it purges cholera." In Vogel's _Historia Materiæ Medicæ_ we read of the seed: "Ischiaticis infusum prodesse, et menses ciere (Dioscorides). Sudorem pellere, et ad scorbutum posse, si eb vius teratur, adiecto saccharo (Boerhaav)." It was called by the old herbalists _sanguinaria_--"quia sanguinem sistet." Murray, at the end of last century, pronounced it useless; but De Maza, arguing against this opinion, relates a case of metrorrhagia cured by it, applied as a cataplasm to the loins, on the recommendation of an old woman, after the doctor had tried several medicines without effect. Lejeune (1822) says he has seen good results from its employment in hæmoptysis. Rademacher has a great opinion of it. He says: "This plant was held to be an anti-hæmorrhagic medicine by the ancients. The superior wisdom of later physicians has pronounced it to have no such power, _because it contains no astringent principle_! (Carheuser's _Mat. Med._) A second property attributed to it was that of stopping diarrhoea; a third, that of cutting short agues. I have lately used it repeatedly in chronic diarrhoea, when this is purely a primary affection of the bowels, with surprising benefit; but it is useless in consensual diarrhoea. I have not yet used it in ague, but would not dissuade others from trying it. But the most important remedial power of this common innocuous plant I learned from no medical author; the knowledge of it was actually forced upon me by the following case: I was called to see a poor woman from whom, eight or ten years before, I had brought away a large quantity of urinary sand by means of magnesia and cochineal, and thereby cured her. Now, the tiresome sand had again accumulated in the kidneys, and the patient was in a pitiable state. The abdominal cavity was full of water, the lower extremities swollen by oedema, and the urine of a bright red color, which formed, on standing, a sediment unmistakably of blood. I prescribed tincture of _Brusa pastoris_, 30 drops, 5 times a day, solely with the intention of stopping the hæmaturia as a preliminary; but imagine my astonishment when I found that the tincture caused a more copious discharge of renal sand than I had ever witnessed. Paracelsus's words occurred to me: 'A physician should overlook nothing; he should look down before him like a maiden, and he will find at his feet a more valuable treasure for all diseases than India, Egypt, Greece or Barbary can furnish.' I should certainly have been a careless fool had I, with this striking effect before me, changed to another medicine. I continued to give the tincture; I saw the urinary secretion increase with the