in deserted fields and waste lands, producing its flowers in May and June. Medical Properties and Uses. This plant has long been considered as a powerful medicine, and until the late revision of the Pharmacopoeia by the London College, it had a place in the catalogue of the Materia Medica, in which the two common varieties of this plant are indiscriminately directed for use, and improperly distinguished into male and female Peony. The roots, flowers, and seeds, have been esteemed in the character of an anodyne and corroborant, especially the roots, which have been extensively used in the treatment of epilepsy; for this purpose the ancients' method was to cut the roots into thin slices, which were attached to a string and suspended about the neck as an amulet; if this failed of success the patient was to have recourse to the internal use of the root, which was given in the form of powder, and in the quantity of a drachm two or three times a day, by which we are informed both infants and adults were cured of this disease. By some it is recommended that the expressed juice should be given in wine, and sweetened with sugar, as the most effectual way of administering this plant. The seeds have been considered by some authors to possess emetic and purgative properties, and by others antispasmodic. They may be given in the same dose as the dried root, but are very little used in modern practice. The roots and seeds of Peony have, when fresh, a faint, unpleasant smell, somewhat of the narcotic kind, and a mucilaginous sub-acrid taste, with a slight degree of bitterness and astringency. In drying they lose their smell, and part of their taste. Extracts made from them by water are almost insipid as well as inodorous, but extracts made by rectified spirit are bitter and considerably astringent. |